The Conservatives in Brighton: A duel by finger jabs at first light: On the Front

YOU HAD TO be sharp to get into the pit-bull fight. Squeeze an invite out of Jeffrey Archer (vintage Krug supplied). Then, dodging the filth, arrive at the third floor of the Grand Hotel before first light yesterday.

There Kenneth Clarke had Norman Tebbit tearing at his ankles. Clarke lunged back: 'You've declared war on the Government, Norman] You've taken the conference by storm]' Maastricht is leading to a single currency, barked Tebbit. 'No it isn't' 'Yes it is.' 'No it isn't'

Tebbit swaggered away theatrically. 'Come back, Norman]' urged the crowd. He turned: 'But, Ken, you haven't even read the treaty]'

Muzzle clamped to the throat. Actually, there was no more physical action than a bit of emphatic finger-jabbing: Richard Ryder, the Chief Whip, gently led the Home Secretary away before anything happened to bother the RSPCA.

Lord Tebbit's parting shot? 'That's the way out, Ken]' - gesturing over the balcony.

'I'M closing down the something- for-nothing society,' announced a Peter Lilley 'sickened by the sight of these spongers descending like locusts . . .'

That was his contribution to the Government's initiatives against New Age Travellers and other people who go to parties. So who emerged at 1 am from the British Airways rave, clutching not one, but two, of BA's Royal Doulton mugs? Peter Lilley, of course.

THERE were a lot of decibels flying around yesterday. Baroness Thatcher's modest entry raised 98 db, with not more than half the hall applauding her (you should perhaps take account of the fair few that were booing, and even those pointedly turning the pages of their newspapers - not the European). And the ovation went on for a chart-topping two minutes and 32 seconds, though last year they clapped her for five minutes.

Significantly, it got louder after conference chairman John Mason foolishly told delegates to sit down. And what, by the way, was a Union flag emblazoned with 'Bolton Wanderers' doing waving for Maggie? It was Ted Heath who said earlier this week that Margaret Thatcher brought a load of soccer hooligans into the party.

NORMAN LAMONT did not impress the noise meter. Before a packed hall, he registered a mere 93.5 decibels in a 76-second stand-up. The problem - content apart - seemed to lie in a severely misjudged finale: thunder and lightning served like angel cakes on that soft, revised-Shetland voice.

His climactic line - 'Strong in will, to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield. That is the Conservative Party' - is from Tennyson's Ulysses, a lament by an old hero 'made weak by time and fate' remembering his unrepeatable past.

The poem opens like this: 'It little profits that an idle King/ By this still hearth, among these barren crags/ Match'd with an aged wife, I meet and dole/ Unequal laws unto a savage race.' The crags were barren yesterday.

IN ONE of the better received moments, Lamont told of 'a Mr and Mrs Evans of Duntsford' who'd sent him a card saying 'Don't give up'. In fact, there is no Duntsford. Tabloid hacks, however, were soon ransacking Dunsford in Devon (broadsheet hacks only ransack The Book of English Verse). They found no Evanses. Lamont's advisers said, belatedly and weakly, that the couple had changed address.