The Chatham House sermon was punctuated by intermittent guffaws from the audience over Black's assessment of his leader's chances of becoming the next PM (and this was a largely Tory audience).
After the speech, PRWeek decided to get the inside story on that Newsnight interview in the South-West with Howard a fortnight ago, about which the party has since made a complaint of bias to the BBC.
Black tells us that not only was he not in attendance, but that the Newsnight crew had a full-day's access to Howard.
Surely that is a revelation to make those counterpart minders in Millbank shudder?