Diary – 6 October 2007

Thank the Lord this will be the last time conference-goers have to endure the hellhole that calls itself Blackpool. The last time I stayed in a Blackpool hotel at a party conference was in the mid-1990s. I woke up at 2 a.m. on the first night covered in sweat. I hadn’t been indulging in any, er, nefarious activity and didn’t feel ill, but I eventually worked it out. The caring Blackpool hotel owner had thoughtfully put rubber incontinence sheets on the bed. Now I am sure some people would pay good money for that sort of thing, but I decided to check out the next morning. Each time I have gone to Blackpool since then I’ve stayed in the gloriously named Ribby Hall Holiday Village, a sort of modern-day Butlins without the red coats, located a few miles outside the town that even the locals dub Chav City. As a conference centre, the Winter Gardens remains stuck in the 1950s.