18.30 It is traditional for me to forget my conference pass every spring and every autumn, regular as clockwork. This weekend was no exception but, by god, September will be. £25 replacement card charge! Be warned, children. That’s no lunch for me for the next three days.

Ooh, isn’t Harrogate pretty? I’ve not been before, and I see why people love it as a conference venue. Beautiful conference centre adjoining the even more gorgeous Royal Theatre (art deco outside, baroque phantasia inside). And there’s more good news, because rather than the usual sub-Grandstand muzak we have a jazz band. We can’t see them from the balcony, but theorise that Norman Lamb is on the drums.

John Fox, the Lib Dem Mayor of Harrogate, opens the proceedings with a warm welcome to his town and an invitation to make use of local hospitality. “We need yer money,” he says.

18.33 Marvellous photo-montage of “our history” going on. The appearance of Kennedy, Campbell, Cable and then Clegg generates applause and the appearance of a thirty-nothing Lord Rennard with those aviator specs and  that toupee-hair everyone had in the 1980s generates mirth. There are enough funny pictures to make it worthwhile and the music is a half-decent cover of something I know but can’t place. Twenty minutes into a party rally and I haven’t cringed once yet. What’s wrong?

18.39 Lord R on the stage now, with better glasses, giving us his potted history from the 1988 merger onwards. “You know you’re in trouble,” he says, “When parents take two years to agree on a baby’s name.” He sets out the shared values of the two parent ideologies and runs over various achievements of the last twenty years. As usual, longest clap is for Iraq. We know what to do.

18.45 Lord R re-imagines “You’ll never walk alone” through the medium of Focus delivery.

18.47 Tim Farron is hosting, always a cracking speechifier, with a rare ability to switch from anger to humour. He’s angry about the lame-

Later: Ahem. It appears that I lost connectivity at a critical point. As I was saying, he’s angry about the lame duck government and the vacuous, visionless opposition. Tweedledum and Tweedledee? More like the Chuckle Brothers, he reckons. Except without the deep ideological convictions. See what I mean?

Now, whatever gremlin this is has rather irritatingly caused me to lose the rest of my liveblog. Tcoh. There I was, tapping away for y’all. All the way through Ros Scott (excellent as usual), Elaine Bagshaw (nasty heckle from the floor as she tabulated various achievements of Liberal Youth – “You’ve done nothing!” Children, play nicely!) and some very interesting chap whose name I didn’t catch but who was, essentially, explaining why he joined the party three months ago, and doing it excellently too. One to watch there.

On to Nick. Others will have tweeted their impressions in realler (is that a word? No. Never mind) time than me so I’ll confine myself to saying  (a) that he remains stubbornly confident and ambitious about the future of the party, and (b) why in the name of heaven don’t people turn their mobile phones off for these things? What’s the matter with them all?

Must awa’  for food now. We’ll put the speech link up as soon as it’s available. More later.