Eddie Barnes: Exc: Watch Dave sitting in hotel room!

FORGET The Speech, now we have the Official Build Up To The Speech. The Conservatives have posted a video on YouTube this morning in which David Cameron is seen in the comfort of his hotel room preparing for his big moment at the Manchester conference later today. In the course of a searching interview with a Tory staffer, viewers can learn that Cameron is worried his voice is sounding "a little bit reedy" and that he is having to do some "trimming" to keep the speech down below an hour.

Cameron also declares that The Speech will seek to focus on the "other side" of the coming recession in an effort to lift the gloom-mongering mood of the conference. In other words, with George Osborne having spent Tuesday telling everyone that there were black clouds coming, Dave today will show how he can see a day when the sun will shine. Let's hope he doesn't break out into song.

Just in case we haven't got the message I've just got back from watching William Hague in the conference hall and I can report that the backdrop to the platform has changed. For the last three days there have been a series of apparently random moving images of British streets, which bring to mind one of those bizarre pieces of installation art you find at modern art galleries which just show a video loop of something over and over again. But the street scenes have now gone, the camera has tilted upwards, and the screen simply shows blue sky and white fluffy clouds. The Messiah cometh.