So, I must still be at conference because my feet are killing me and my head’s splitting.

I don’t know what these things are usually like. I got up at 5am and began the epic journey down to Bournemouth, stopping about half way to pick up my intern for the day, Stuart Sharpe (nominated for Best Non-Lib Dem blog at the BOTYS). I was going to show him the ropes and pretend that the life of a blogger is both glamorous and exciting.

Well, so we arrived, got parked then found ourselves running up a very steep hill trying to find the first fringe event. By the time we arrived I was sweating like a pig (I’d like to say ‘glowing’ but I’m afraid that would be stretching reality one fact too far). I ended up having to run away to powder my nose (not *that* kind of powder), and as a result missed Dyke’s newsworthy bit about the BBC’s role in politics. Oh well. The rest of the event was okay…. Guido has a good bit:

Hands up if you think Lord Rennard shouldn’t pay back the £42,000?

No-one did.

There you go then.

Anyway, this remains the only proper politics fringe I’ve been to so far. After that I decided to impress my intern by spending the afternoon having drinks with (shameless name dropping alert) Guido, Nick Cohen of the Observer, Lynne Featherstone, Mark Reckons, Sara Scarlett and Mark Littlewood.

Guido, by the way, is starting to look like a walking pint of Guinness, with jet black hair with a sort of tuft of white on top.

I’d like to say I planned this, and that this is normal, but it’s not – it just sort of happened. Felt very well connected, but of course it’s all an illusion, and I did have to tolerate being introduced as ‘The Right Wing Lib Dems’ (all 3 of us). Funny.

Of course someone was missing – Thankfully Iain Dale himself was unfortunate enough to find himself on his own in the Marriott, at which point my intern prodded and poked me until I went over and said hi. Poor guy.

Spent the next ten minutes celeb spotting – Michael White, Shirley Williams and my favourite Andrew Neil – I told my intern he could have £20 CASH if he ran off with Andrew’s wig. Sadly, it didn’t happen and to be honest I reckon Andrew can run faster anyway.

Then it was the BOTYS where, as you’re probably already aware, was a complete FIX and I didn’t win anything! Apparently the judges turned out to have actual skills in judgement… who knew? So ends the blogging onanism season for this year and normality can be resumed. Congrats due to Costigan and Mark. Well done guys