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Nick Clegg steps off the Lib Dem battlebus. He looks around, and says, "Where am I? "Third" shouts a voice from the crowd. A joke that is on the current issue of Private Eye, and one that's starting to feel like the very definition of old hat, if some of the weekend opinion polls are to be believed.

This morning, the same Nick Clegg stepped off the same battle bus in Swansea. Before he'd had much of a chance to look around, a man wielding a loudhailer and a copy of the Socialist Worker tried to shout Mr Clegg down, or engage, as the papers put it over the weekend, in an anti-Lib Dem offensive.

The man with the loudhailer had already had a brush with South Wales Police who tried to confiscate the bullhorn before Mr Clegg's arrival, but, it seems, gave it back to him before the battle bus turned up, and the Lib Dem leader got the chance to show off his newly-needed prowess at dealing with hecklers.

"I know you're getting very angry but you have had 13 years to deliver for Wales and you haven't. Just pipe down, give someone else a go." Applause from the crowd, albeit one already pretty well disposed to Mr Clegg given the number of Liberal Democrat placards.

How long will the spike in Lib Dem popularity last? You tell me. But if the answer is more than a fortnight and a bit, then there'll be joyous candidates in constituencies like Montgomeryshire, where I'm spending the day. There'll be frustrated Conservative hopefuls who must have scented blood, furious Plaid Cymru ones, and nervous Labour candidates in seats like Swansea West and Newport East.

The truth is, no one can really tell what the effect of the Liberal surge is in individual constituencies, but at the moment, the other party leaders must be frantically wondering how the spike - if that's what it is - can be blunted.

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