It was hard to watch – and it’s going to be impossible to forget

Weeks, months, even years from now, perhaps for the rest of my life, I will still be jolting awake in the night: heart pounding, pyjamas soaked in sweat, and lungs gasping frantically for breath, as I relive, in agonising slow-motion, the full screaming nightmare of that speech.

And I only had to watch it. So God alone knows how Theresa May feels.

That poor woman. That poor, poor woman. No matter how many black cats her chauffeur ran over on the journey to the conference centre, she did not deserve anything like this. No one deserves anything like this. Short of accidentally knocking over her lectern, and watching it topple on to an Army veteran in the front row, there is no way, simply no way at all, in which the Prime Minister’s speech could have gone any more wrong.

And none of it was her fault. If anything, that made it all the more painful.

The thing is: it had actually started quite well. Mrs May walked out on stage, acknowledging the applause with a modest, thankful smile. She then began by apologising, with unquestionable sincerity, for the botched election. “It was too scripted. Too presidential… I hold my hands up. I’m sorry.”

As one, the hall forgivingly applauded. Then she spoke about her reasons for fighting on, her resolve to “root out injustice”, her determination to defend “the most vulnerable”. For once, she was sounding natural. Human. Confident.

And then the disaster began. From

nowhere, a man appeared in front of her lectern. The audience blinked, frowned, murmured, and looked helplessly about. No one moved – except for the man. He produced a piece of paper, and presented it to the Prime Minister.

“Boris,” he said, calmly and clearly, “has asked me to give you this”. The piece of paper was headed “P45”.

Mrs May glanced down at him – and then returned to her script, and continued reading. It was if she’d told herself the man wasn’t really there. She was just imagining him.

Yet the man didn’t vanish. He was still there. And he was still holding out the P45. So – while continuing, without pause, to read out her speech – she accepted it from him, as if it were a piece of fanmail from a child, and carried on.

Abruptly the hall awoke from its stupor. There were shouts. Boos. Squawks of indignation. Unseen figures chased the man, grabbed him, and bundled him laboriously from the hall, pursued by a swarm of reporters. Finally accepting that this was actually happening, the Prime Minister abandoned her speech, and, with an air of slow-dawning bewilderment, gazed at the pandemonium unfolding in front of her.

Removing the intruder – later identified as a little-known comedian with a history of similar pranks – seemed to take forever. The hall was yearning, pleading, for the Prime Minister to say something. At last she did. “I was about to tell you who I’d give a P45 to,” she piped up gamely,

‘Again and again she stopped short, gulped water and restarted – only to flounder once more’

“and that’s Jeremy Corbyn!”

With a sigh, even a groan, of relief, the hall applauded.

In a daze, Mrs May retreated to her script, and resumed reading. The man had gone. The embarrassment was behind her. It was fine. It was all fine.

But it wasn’t fine. The nightmare had only just begun.

The hall had more or less regained its composure when she reached a passage on the rights of EU immigrants. “You are welcome here,” she read. “And I urge, COUGH, COUGH. COUGH. And I urge the negotiating teams to reach… COUGH…”

Something had happened to Mrs May’s voice. It was faltering, stumbling, lurching. It was breaking like a pubescent boy’s; veering from side to side like a panicked cyclist. One moment she would croak like a bullfrog, the next she would squeak like a balloon. And then another blast of the coughing, the hideous coughing, larynx in torment, dry as burnt straw.

Again and again she stopped short, flapped for her glass, gulped down some water, and restarted her sentence – only to flounder once more.

Everyone was willing her on. But God, it hurt to watch. In desperation Philip Hammond, the Chancellor, slipped Mrs May a lozenge. She swallowed it, battled on – and then gave out yet again.

In advance, journalists had been handed copies of her speech. I flicked through the text with mounting alarm.

There were another eight pages still to go.

For what felt like hours she staggered on. But then, slowly but surely, her voice seemed to be recovering. Oh, thank the Lord. She was going to make it.

It was at this point, however, that the punchline arrived. On the wall behind Mrs May, in large white letters, was her defiant slogan: BUILDING A COUNTRY THAT WORKS FOR EVERYONE.

Suddenly, while the Prime Minister read obliviously on, the letter “F” fell off the wall. And then, shortly afterwards, the final “E”.

BUILDING A COUNTRY, the slogan now read, THAT WORKS OR EVERYON.

Mrs May had no idea. A thousand people sat and stared, overcome with pity. Somehow, she fought her way to the final line. “Thank you,” she rasped. The hall jumped to its feet and applauded: out of respect for her doggedness, in sympathy for her lucklessness, and in gratitude that the whole sorry shambles was over. Philip, the Prime Minister’s husband, scrambled on to the stage, and flung his arms around her.

The theme of her speech, incidentally, had been “The British dream”. Lord, if you’re listening: you have a cruel sense of humour.