We awoke in Bournemouth to blue skies and the news that a whale had beached itself near the Lib Dem conference. “Now that's a metaphor,” said one hack admiringly. “You don’t get better than that.” Or bigger.

This was a gentle giant of a metaphor, a dead northern bottlenose whale the size of a Ford Mondeo estate car. It was a metaphor too big to ignore. The whale was named Gilbert. Well, I thought, the Lib Dems should think positive. At least it wasn’t called Nick. Or Vince.

Not that the Lib Dems didn’t try to ignore Gilbert (and Vince) yesterday. Nick Clegg’s first event was as far away from both as practicable, a visit to students at the Highmead Community Farm in a place called Ferndown. I suspect that the idea was to look cuddly but, in light of the E. coli nightmare, plans had changed.

Nick was late. He usually is. Still, there are worse places to wait: beautiful sunshine, fluttering butterflies, chickens clucking, horses munching. In the middle of all this, Mike, a Lib Dem press officer, was marching around, issuing military-type orders.

“Let’s just go over this again!” he said, walking out Nick’s route. “And then he will walk round to the chillies.” The chillies? What about the chickens? Mike ignored me. Horses? No answer. I spied a bed of pumpkins. They were even orange and so, most probably, Lib Dem-voting pumpkins. “No pumpkins,” Mike said sternly. “Only chillies.” What about Gilbert? Was it a metaphor? Mike looked studiously blank. Would Nick or Vince be visiting the whale? No, said Mike, only chillies.

The chillies were, as you’d expect, hot stuff. Nick, jacket off to reveal pink shirt and cufflinks (on a farm!), managed to pick one. “Look at that!” cried Nick. We did. It was a funny bowl-shaped chilli. Nick asked a student named Joe if he’d ever eaten one. “Yes, and I nearly cried,” said Joe. Ah, I thought, it’s been to the Lib Dem conference too.

I tried to ask Nick about Gilbert but he only wanted to talk about Afghanistan, Baroness Scotland, and France. Finally, I pounced and asked what he thought about Gilbert. Nick looked exasperated. Indeed, it must have been those chillies, because he seemed a little hot under the collar. “What I think is, that is a whale trying to get to the Lib Dem conference!” But, I replied, the whale is dead.

Nick ignored me. “You see, Ann, you might not think we are exciting, but even the great mammals of the sea find the Liberal Democrats exciting!” Oh dear. Well, I’m not sure Vince, for one, had a whale of a time yesterday. I think that, from now on, we are in a Don’t Mention the Whale situation.

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