"I was beginning to fear people didn't want to hear me!"

Paisley teased, when he eventually got a word in. But the big grin said it all. The DUP does nothing quietly so its first party conference since it swept the election boards would always be triumphalist.

Paisley remembered darker days, when his party was on the margins, despised and demonised by opponents. But he'd never thought of giving up, he declared, quoting Shakespeare: "Let come what will, I will bear it out. He is not worthy of the honeycomb that shuns the hive because the bees have stings."

The DUP had been stung by "journalistic bees, broadcasting bees, ecclesiastical bees, government bees and big republican bees and wasps.

Yet we've survived to enjoy the honey!"

The Belfast agreement was stinking in the grave, "dug with the spade of truth". Paisley was delighted Martin McGuinness had denounced last week's IMC report as "bullshit".

The DUP had "hit the bull's eye" and McGuinness was obviously well acquainted with one particular part of a bull.

MP Sammy Wilson said the Ulster Unionists had played their own version of Big Brother at the Westminster election . . . "all but one of them was thrown out of the house".

If George Galloway was a pussycat, David Trimble had been the house poodle "begging and doing tricks for Tony, Bertie and Gerry".

The sole survivor was "that blonde bombshell" North Down MP, Lady Sylvia Hermon, "the dizzy dame from Donaghadee, Chantelle without the brains".

If the UUP was playing Big Brother, Sinn Fein was working for Big Brother, Wilson said: "They started out with a Stakeknife, now they've got a whole cutlery set!" Wee Denis Donaldson must be a "teaspoon".

Wilson noted Gerry Adams had confessed to hugging trees: "What he didn't say was that half his party prefer the Branch! And up at the top is Tom Hartley, the secret squirrel!"

Gossip among activists centred on whether deputy leader Peter Robinson, who has just had laser eye surgery, suited his spectacle-free new look.

"Maybe the party will be offering us all some botox and nipand-tucks, " said one enthusiastic female delegate.

"No surgery for me, " declared Ian Paisley jnr, "though the wife reckons I need reduction.

It's far too big . . . the ego, that is!"