Thousands of readers, more every single week, all following the Leicestershire’s various political soap operas.

Latest figures from Google show that while many of my readers live in Leicestershire, thousands log on from elsewhere the country.

Dig a little deeper into the statistics and it shows that many of them are logging on from local authorities around Britain; councillors checking up on LGA buddies and chums from training courses, and senior council officers checking up on former colleagues or doing background checks on potential new recruits.

A chunk of visitors log on from servers on the parliamentary estate. MPs, researchers and other staffers from Leicestershire and beyond stopping by to see what’s happening in the city and county.

I also get a significant number of visits from think tanks, big business and other media organisations. The powers-that-be in the headquarters of the Conservative, Labour and Lib Dem parties also drop by regularly.

The graphic on the right shows that visitors to this blog come from Aberdeen to Aberdare, Liverpool to London. The large dark orange circle partly visible in the centre is Leicester.

Once in a while a visitor takes me by surprise.

Recently someone from Witney in Oxfordshire logged on for a couple of days in a row and pored through every post I’d made about Conservative MPs and councillors in Leicestershire.

Witney, of course, is Prime Minister David Cameron’s constituency. He was in the country, but not in London, at the time. Could it be?

I don’t think I’ve ever had a crowd turn on me, but it happened yesterday.

David Cameron visited Leicestershire and his first stop was at the LCB Depot in the city. I turned up and was told to wait in reception for a spinner to find me and escort me through to meet the PM.

In the meantime I met Gary Garner, city council Unison man, and followed him through to a bustling room towards the rear of the main building out of curiosity.

In it were around 20-30 people, who suddenly surrounded me and demanded that I write a story about David Cameron “refusing to meet them”.

I tried to point out that he’s the Prime Minister on an official visit, not a councillor at a ward surgery at the local community centre. You can’t just pop along and ask for a chat. I wondered what on earth they were thinking? Where did they get the idea from? There wasn’t some halcyon period when Gordon Brown waved in all comers to discuss domestic policy. Why did they expect Cameron to?

Many were union members, a couple of them were homeless, and a couple were children.

The two primary school age youngsters were jabbed towards me. “They want to ask him why they can’t go to university anymore,” someone barked in my ear. I racked my brains, trying to recall the news story which stated that the coalition had now banned children from going to university. I failed.

I also didn’t have time to establish whether the coalition was about to be blamed for the homeless status of the two men who were sat at a table in the middle, as I urgently had to return to the reception area to be taken through some secured doors.

I told the crowd I’d give Gary a call at some point to discuss the issue. A man came up to me and said: “It’s more than just Unison, there’s the whole umbrella of local unions.” He reeled off a list of acronyms which most people, including me, would struggle to identify without some elaboration.

I began to leave. A woman barked after me: “Corporate media. Look at him, he’s scared of us. Corporate media.” The assembled crowd murmured in agreement.

I wasn’t scared, but I was left stunned at the attitude of some of those present. They returned to the windows for a glimpse of the PM as I was whisked away.

Their demands for an impromptu audience with the most powerful man in the country still rang in my ears…

All three leaders have set aside time tomorrow to prepare for Thursday’s broadcast on ITV, appointing colleagues to act as their opponents in sparring practice.

Brown has Alastair Campbell playing David Cameron and the former Downing Street adviser Theo Bertram as Nick Clegg. The Liberal Democrats are using David Laws as Cameron and Chris Huhne as Brown. Cameron has asked his shadow culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, to spar as Clegg, Damian Green as Brown, and Michael Gove acting as the moderator.

It always looks effortless on the evening news. David Cameron rolls into town on his battle bus, makes a roaring speech in front of adoring fans, then off he goes.

The first thing us media types knew about the arrival of the Tory big gun was a call first-thing from the party.

That’s because, as leader of the opposition in a General Election race, David Cameron is a big security risk. In contrast, we knew about Ken Clarke’s arrival a week before he arrived at the Mercury.

The location, details and times for these type of visits are always slightly sketchy. It’s like taking a phone call from a character from The Wire.

We saw David at Loughborough train station, but it was another 20 minutes before he arrived in the town centre. It was in this time that the stage was painstakingly set. Helium-filled balloons on strings are passed into the crowd, local Tory councillors take their place, and party activists don their on-message t-shirts.

People might be disconnected from politics these days, but everyone was interested. Even smirking students – aloof from the political process – couldn’t resist sticking around to see who was about to arrive.

The Tories’ East Midlands press officer – a former regional newspaper news editor – greeted me on arrival and set out the very sketchy plan for the afternoon. Schedules for big events like these seemingly always go pear-shaped.

When the bus pulled up I expected cheers, but the crowd waited for the doors to open and David to step out of the bus before going wild.

It provided an eerie silence before he appeared, almost as if they were hedging their bets in case the doors opened and Michael Howard jumped out in a Dracula costume, dooming the campaign.

You don’t get a feel for that kind of awkwardness unless you’re there. Presumably a press officer took note – get them cheering earlier, next time.

Cameron did a pretty rousing speech in front of the supporters and there is a certain genius in the layout (pictured above) which is the norm for all political parties these days.

The branded bus was the backdrop so no mischief-maker could sneak into shot, supporters surrounded him in a thick semi-circle to block out what many would call real members of the public, and the press men on high provided a barrier to any potential egg hurlers. A solitary Green supporter held up a scrawled message on a piece of A4 paper – Vote Green.

After the speech, we were told he’d have a stroll through the town centre. Three reporters – from the BBC and Loughborough Echo, as well as myself – were invited inside the town hall to wait for David to return.

We were placed into the hands of one of their national press officers. I was then shown through to a room, where inexplicably, Cameron was already sat.

Before I had a chance to consider how on earth he made it there before me, I was in at the deep end and quizzing the man who could be the next Prime Minister.

Finally, for all the talk of CCHQ’s obsessive control over image, we weren’t briefed in advance, asked to steer clear or certain subjects, given a time limit or question quota. I’ve had that experience on other occasions with political reporters, although I usually disregard it.

After the interview I headed out of the town hall. Word was spreading fast through the ranks of photographers that Cameron would be heading over to a butcher’s shop opposite for a bit of a photo opportunity. Could come in handy for a pun in the story, I thought. Ballot box, bangers, there’s got to be something in it. But it turned out to be false.

Instead the police cleared the area outside the town hall and he jumped aboard his coach again, off for the rest of a gruelling campaign.

The full interview is in Tuesday’s Mercury

“Nationally [voters are] voting for a team, with people like George Osborne, William Hague, Ken Clarke and Caroline Spelman. People rightly think ‘who do I want running the team?’” – David Cameron

So the Shadow Secretary of State for Communities and government gets a mention, but Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling doesn’t.

Is this Cameron’s Sicilian message that gaffe-prone Chris will be sleeping with the political fishes if Cameron wins the election?