Stockport councillor Linda Holt started the queue for David Cameron’s closing speech at 10 a.m. this morning — four and a half hours before the Conservative leader was due to walk onto the stage at Birmingham’s Symphony Hall.

With 10,000 registered attendees — the highest at a Tory conference for many years — and only 3,000 seats, an early start was essential for those wanting to be in the arena to hear Cameron’s hour-long address.

(Reuters photographer Stephen Hird snapped this picture of Cameron on his way to rehearse the speech)

Last year the queue for Cameron’s closing oration snaked all the way through the exhibition halls of Blackpool’s Winter Gardens and almost out into the street. Many were turned away.

Holt was celebrating her 55th birthday by ensuring she would get a good position in the hall. But she said she didn’t want to hear anything “airy fairy” from the man who could be PM.

“He’s got to make an impact today … his speech is the one that everyone is waiting for,” she said. With events elsewhere pushing the conference to the inside pages, Holt said Cameron needed to deliver “some real dynamic stuff.”

By 11:30 a.m. — three hours to go — there were already more than 100 in the line. By 1:30 p.m., and still an hour before the start, the queue had grown so large the hall was officially declared full.

Ken Wood, 49, councillor in Longbridge and a parliamentary candidate in the safe Labour seat of Wolverhampton South East, said he wanted to hear Cameron talk about “stability”.

“Whether or not we are in difficult times. We’d be foolish to try to ignore it… but I’ve no doubt it will be very powerful, very straightforward and very focused.”

But Steven Bainbridge, 20, chair of a Newcastle University conservative student group, was bold enough to go off message and rebel against the conference’s officially sombre tone .

“We do need the serious stuff but it would be good to have a bit of triumphalism. I think when it’s the closing speech we need the chance to let our hair down.”