It was a very strange double act yesterday when Sandi Toksvig and Ming Campbell took to the stage in Brighton. At times they were actually flirting with each other as they perched on their ludicrous bar-stool chairs in front of the conference.

“You’re the blonde in the bar,” said Ming.

“And I’ve pulled,” she announced. “I didn’t know you cared,” crooned Ming.

She stopped for a moment and noted drily: “I think it’s going to be a very big surprise at home.”

Ming chortled: “It’s going to be a surprise at my home too!”

Oh dear. Where to look but down? I thought that nothing could surprise me at the Lib Dems but I was wrong. This was supposed to be a question-and-answer session, a sort of Ming Unplugged. Instead he appeared to have become Ming Unhinged. For here was the party leader, aged 104, giggling away with his interviewer, the very funny (and very gay) comedian.

The conference watched, transfixed. The dialogue may have been as stilted as a seduction scene from an old black-and-white film but they were loving it. The Lib Dems are desperate for their leader to be liked. Sandi had exceeded expectations.

“How is the conference going for you?” she asked.

“TREMENDOUS!” cried Ming (desperate to have zing).

She affixed her eyes on his and asked him to tell her more. “I enjoy conference,” he said. “I’ve been coming a long time. It’s a great opportunity to meet people.”

Can you bear it? Sandi then did her duty. “I’m going to ask you the question about your age,” she warned him. “I was told it was the elephant in the room. Are you not sick of being asked this?” Ming announced that you need to have a thick skin if you are in politics (this is true for elephants too). He said this with as much dynamism as you can muster when you are perched, trouser legs riding high, on a bar stool. His socks went on for ever. I wondered if they were held up by those old-fashioned garters.

Sandi asked him what motivated him to be leader. “Why do it?” she asked, teetering on her stool.

“Well, if you ever put me in one of those ham-slicing machines,” said Ming, cutting the air with his hands, “you’d find the top half Liberal and the bottom half Liberal Democrat”.

He started going on about how long he had been in the party (we know, for elephants never forget) but I couldn’t get over the ham-slicing. Ming babbled on, unaware that he had murdered himself.

Sandi asked him how he felt before a big speech.

“Scared stiff!” cried Ming. When he had run in the Olympic relay team, he had been terrified too. It was the same with Prime Minister’s Questions. “The day you stop being nervous is the day you give up. Harold Macmillian used to be physically sick in the corridor of the House of Commons before he went into PMQs,” noted Ming, happily.

I flinched. First flirting, then slicing, now vomiting. Whatever next? “Nelson used to be sick in the harbour,” Sandi announced. “Seasickness.” It made her wonder about his career choice.

They giggled more about how frightened they were before events because they cared so much. Sandi trumped him on this and Ming chortled merrily: “Gosh! I’m a failure!” How they laughed.

Sandi then looked over at Ming. “I feel you are an optimist,” she noted. Ming glowed. For guess what? He WAS an optimist.

It ended with a double kiss. They walked off, hand in hand, to wild applause.

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