In the interests of public health, it behoves me to announce that I was suffering from a maximally virulent strain of swine flu in Blackpool last week. It is, therefore, highly likely that anyone who came into contact with me at the conference, which I have been told may be everyone bar Stephen Dorrell, will become similarly infected. So be it. Better to get this sort of thing out of the way before the campaign proper begins.
Clearly, it was the swine flu that influenced behaviour which colleagues inform me might be considered, by the more prim within the party, as erratic.

If I had been up to the gills in Tamiflu rather than absorbing the occasional Martini while "working the bars", then certain things would not have happened. Never apologise, never explain and all that, but, nevertheless, Theresa May . . . sorry.

Perhaps if, instead of selflessly and unceasingly putting in the hours for the Party, I had taken a moment to sneak a look in the mirror, I might have realised how poorly I was. Never more so than on Wednesday when, after 12 hours straight removing the wrinkles from Dave's "This is the Real Me" speech, I collapsed on to my hotel bed only to suffer the most ghastly hallucinations.

They say that, when you drown, the happier moments in your life flash before you. Death by swine flu is not like that. I had harrowing visions of some of the stupider people I'd met at Oxford: Luntz, Delingpole, Young, the Johnson sister, all arrayed around my bed, whingeing about how much they would have liked to have gone to Eton. A more hackneyed and dispiriting way to depart this earth is hard to imagine.

Obviously, I pulled through. And it was only post-Blackpool that I discovered the fervid dreams were caused not by swine flu, but by unwittingly having turned on a television documentary called When Boris Met Dave on More4. Watching this effort with my eyes open was, possibly, more depressing. If hoi polloi insist on making these programmes, they really need to distinguish between those (such as David and I) who are elected into "The Buller" because the Club would make no sense otherwise, and the rest (such as Boris and that Polish ambassador whose name I can never remember) who strive so hard to become members that, on election, they make utter fools of themselves. It is a distinction that will only grow in importance.

Next week: a new column, "Preparing for Oblivion" by Fran Reddington

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