What a day in Blackpool! This is about as unspun as it gets. It began in shambles with the aptly named Simon Mort announcing: “Chairing the Conservative party conference is like three things in life: losing your virginity, death, and running in the Derby. You only do it once so you better get it right!”

At which point everything went wrong. “Haven’t we had a fantastic year!” cried Mr Mort.

“Can’t hear!” cried the delegates on his right.

Mr Mort ran over to another bit of the stage. “Can you hear me from here?” “NO!” they cried. Mr Mort then embarked on an epic struggle to be heard, with the audience hurling suggestions at him.

He took the mike off, used a different one, and stood on various bits of the long white platform. Behind him, the huge screen showed a blue sky with white fluffy clouds scudding by, oblivious to the chaos below.

“Softer!” cried a delegate.

“This is like therapy, not a speech,” cried Mr Mort as it dawned on him that you can die more than once – at least on stage.

Mr Mort was replaced by some light salsa music interspersed with incredibly sad harmonica riffs. A sound engineer appeared and counted to ten over and over again. Proceedings were suspended as the harmonica wailed and the clouds drifted by.

The sound engineer got wild applause when he finally stopped. Mr Mort tried again, though the harmonica continued in the background, we know not why. David Cameron slipped into the hall, neatly avoiding the false start, to hear William Hague.

He got an instant standing pre-ovation and, for once, it proved to be well deserved. This was by far the best speech of the conference season, a tumultuous and heartfelt piece of oratory. As he spoke, even the clouds tried to stop and listen.

Mr Hague heaped praise on David Cameron (brilliant, tenacious, etc) and attacked disloyal Tories as “self-indulgent”. Norman Tebbit, busy digging the grave of Cameron conservatism, may have leant briefly on his shovel for a cackle or two at that.

But Mr Hague’s real paint-stripping scorn was reserved for Gordon Brown and his new love for Margaret Thatcher. “Some of us stood here 30 years ago with Margaret Thatcher,” boomed Mr Hague.

“We, Gordon, backed her when she rescued our country in the face of every denunciation and insults from the likes of you!”

He drew himself up, his righteousness rippling now like an electric eel. “You may fawn now at the feet of our greatest Prime Minister but you are no Margaret Thatcher!”

Well, they heard that and they loved it. It set the stage for an afternoon of almost frantic activity. Truly, it was hard to keep up. There was Michael Heseltine, the great grandfather lion, his white-gold eyebrows dominating all. Hezza was followed by Bozza (aka Boris Johnson), blonder and not as grand but still a hoot. His attack on bendy buses – “jack-knifing, traffic-blocking, self-combusting, cyclist-crushing” – only gets madder.

Now David Cameron jumped up on stage, unannounced, and did his best to impersonate an MC. It was really quite unnerving, especially after Labour’s hyper-controlled sombre proceedings of last week.

“This week we are going to mount the great Conservative fightback,” cried Dave, before switching back to his MC duties and introducing Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Arnie, who as the Terminator knows a bit about coming back, appeared by videolink. Behind him, the backdrop turned into a waving American flag.

It was most surreal. Dave watched with some relief: the day had been rescued, the fightback had begun and, more importantly, the sound system was working.

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