In their own way the Tories are perfectly normal. Consider Mr Norris

In-between returning from being one of the Daily Telegraph’s representatives at the Bournemouth Labour conference, and setting off to be one at the Blackpool Conservative conference, the flu struck me. The doctor said that, among other things, I would have to avoid crowds for the next few days. I thought: that means I can at least go to the Conservative conference.

But apparently not. Even that modest gathering was not safe for me, nor from me. I had to follow the conference on television. Thus the mind went back to the first time I had ever done so. The realisation dawned that it was a Blackpool Conservative conference, and that this year was its 40th anniversary. It was, I suppose, the most famous Conservative conference in the party’s history. On its eve, it was announced from No. 10 that the Prime Minister, Macmillan, had been admitted to hospital ‘for an operation for prostatic obstruction’ — which I remember having to look up in the public library’s medical dictionary. In due course, a message from Macmillan was read from the platform. He was resigning. A new leader should now be found through ‘the customary processes of consultation’.

The conference instantly turned into something resembling an American presidential convention in the glorious days when it, rather than the dreary primaries, decided the candidate. I had been interested in politics for only about a year. I did not realise that this was the exception among Tory conferences. But in front of the TV set again, after 40 years, much had changed in television.

Part of my viewing was a stupendous Sky TV conference report each evening, which the great populist columnist of the day, the Sun’s Richard Littlejohn, presided over. In tone it resembled television half-time football discussions. The two subjects, politics and football, were occasionally linked.