I followed him and his golliwog and red scooter around like a bad smell – until his extraordinary capability for reciting cricket statistics bored me so much I realised I had more in common with his doll-loving sister Dawn. Antony Green calls the 1993 "unwinnable" federal election for Paul Keating. For as long as I remember he was a numbers nerd: his gifts were recognised early by his family's landlord, Dot Holmes, who was a school teacher like my grandmother. Both women urged Green's parents to give him the best education they could afford and he went on to be dux of our Oatlands primary school, and gain entry to the then all-boys selective James Ruse Agricultural High school in 1972 in nearby Carlingford. His extraordinary memory, along with his love of history and storytelling are skills he inherited from his father, a fine raconteur who was as obsessed with Clipper ships and rugby league tables (especially in relation to his beloved Parramatta Eels) as his son was obsessed with cricket and The Beatles, and now the Sydney Swans.

This skill for stats has helped him spice up election night across the nation since 1991, when he he first graced ABC screens with Quentin Dempster in the NSW state election coverage. The Pitt and Green families at Greens Avenue, Dundas. This 2016 ballot, takes his own personal election tally to 66 – that is how many federal, state and territory election broadcasts he's fronted for the national broadcaster. For a quarter of a century now he's been an election-day fixture, as beloved as the cake stall at the local primary school voting booth. But this otherwise dull campaign has had a special poignancy. John Green and his son, Antony.

On April 18, the day Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull recalled both houses of parliament and the Senate rejected the building industry watchdog legislation setting the stage for a July 2 election, he was giving the eulogy at his mother' funeral. For the past few years the man with one of the finest brains in the country has watched the heart-breakingly slow decline of his mother's brain in a Blacktown nursing home as she, like my own mother, disappeared into an Alzheimic fog in her final years. Christmas 1967. From left: the writer Helen Pitt aged two (recovering from measles), ABC election analyst Antony Green and his sister Dawn. Born in 1960, to teens Ann and John in Warrington, Cheshire, Green's family migrated to Sydney in 1964, arriving just before The Beatles and taking up residence in a Nissen hut at Dundas migrant hostel. "My first memory of Australia was watching The Beatles arrive in Sydney on the television at the Dundas migrant hostel," Green recalls.

His mother told me she cried herself to sleep for weeks – pregnant and lonely as "new Australians" in their makeshift home, which was hellishly hot in summer and freezing in winter. His electrician father went for a job interview and arrived at the wrong address, walking into the Le Tourneau Westinghouse headquarters where my father was the plant engineer. Dad offered "Greeny" a job on the spot as he needed an electrician, and not long after arranged for him to rent the house next to my grandmother's, beginning a lifelong friendship that merged into family. So much so that when their real grandmother Agnes visited from Warrington in 1968, his sister Dawn declared "you're not my grandmother". Because my grandmother was. At James Ruse he studied four unit maths and won the Year 11 history medal, but dropped this for the HSC in favour of science subjects, which helped him gain entry to Sydney University and become the first in his family to get a degree (his mother was one of nine and his father one of four – most of whom never made it past high school). He completed a science degree in pure maths and computing and later an economics degree majoring in politics, emerging as a computer programmer in the nascent days of software writing; skills which he still employs for his whiz bang computer program which gives him an insight into the nation's 150 electorates come election night.

He gave up the good salary to answer a job ad for a poorly paid election researcher and the rest is Australian political history. His father John always joked he never knew how to spell psephologist, let alone dream his son would become one. Green refuses to call this election – preferring to wait until the stats start rolling out on his computer. "I always say when you call it depends on how close it is. I'm not making any predictions, I just read what the data tells me. "People think I have a perfect memory but I have a very good computer system which triggers my memory, though I have a hard time remembering people's names these days," the 56-year-old cycling enthusiast says. Our families have celebrated Christmas and birthdays together – from my fifth to my 50th – but this election is the first with all our parents gone. My father in his final few years often used to say if the Liberal Party mantra of stopping the boats had occurred in the 1960s, our nation would be without both Tony Abbott and Antony Green.