Convention Diary: A democratic mêlée around the C-list celebrities

* Amid the seething humanity there is barely room to move. Delegates squeeze through while the media chases C-list celebrities. In a mêlée your diarist found himself face to face with the talk-show host Jerry Springer, the one-time mayor of Cincinnati now considering a 2006 run as senator for Ohio. Before Mr Springer had time for his usual tricks - revealing one's brother was really one's sister and was having an affair with a cousin, or whatever - he was gone in an explosion of camera flashes.

* It's hard work this celebrity spotting. Sometimes it becomes surreal. Look! There's Toby Ziegler, the Democrat communications director. Sort of. It was actually Richard Schiff, an actor who plays the fictional Ziegler in The West Wing .

* And where are the Republicans? Thanks to the Boston Globe for pointing out a team of 30 in a "war room" close by. The party chairman, Ed Gillespie, said: "We understand that we're swimming upstream here but we're going to swim anyway."