"Friends, unionists and Ulster folk, lend me your votes. I come to bury Jeffrey Donaldson's political career, not to resurrect it. The noble Jeffrey harbours leadership ambitions and that, dear friends, is a grievous fault when the future of this province and the link with the crown depends on me becoming First Minister next week. Jeffrey may be noble, but I won the Nobel.
"John Taylor too is an honourable man and as I stand before you here, I can say that I still do not know which way the Laird of Strangford will jump, nor am I even sure he knows himself. But hark, dear friends. Ask not what Ulster Unionism can do for you, but what you can do for Ulster Unionism. Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for us if we reject the Hillsborough package.
"The future of our people is at stake, not to mention the forbearance of my new-found friends, Peter, Tony and Bertie, not forgetting Bill. I will never forgive you if the prospect of invitations to Downing Street or even Chequers recedes from view. If you have any votes, prepare to shed them now.
"I have here a letter from Mr Mandelson and he has promised me `Police in our Time'. The proud name of the RUC will be retained, but not on the side of the Land-Rover. But do not be alarmed, dear friends, there will be no more police Land-Rovers, only nice saloon cars, for Gerry Adams has promised me there will be no more war and Gerry is an honourable man."
While most, though not perhaps all, of the above would be seen as totally fanciful as a script for David Trimble at this morning's gathering in Belfast's Waterfront Hall, it is quite likely that his speech, or indeed speeches, will be decisive. During the week he suggested it was time for unionists to face reality, a theme explored also by Mr Mandelson. The message that it is time to stop the nonsense and acknowledge that the ground rules of politics in Northern Ireland have changed, changed utterly, may well be repeated today.
It is all the Americans' fault, of course. I have reported in the past that anti-agreement unionists were applying the lessons learnt in transatlantic political leadership courses.
As part of the peace process, young members of the UUP were invited to participate and found themselves very impressed by the techniques of US politics, especially some Democrats they met who told them about breaking down your waverers into "six categories of persuadability". Madison Avenue meets Mid-Ulster.
In contravention of the stereotype, young people in the UUP tend to be well to the right of their elders and they promptly applied these lessons in the effort to keep Northern Ireland more or less the way it was in the old days before most of them were even born.
Another Madison Avenue technique borrowed by the No camp was the "focus group" where a sample gathering of the type of people you wish to influence is exposed to your product and perhaps those of your competitors.
Such a gathering in Belfast watched last Monday night's Ulster Television Insight program me, where Mr Donaldson and his fellow No man, Mr Peter King, were taunted with the allegation that they had come up with no alternative to the policy and programme of the party leader.
"David Trimble threw down the gauntlet," a senior No campaigner said. "It was felt prudent to pick it up." Thus was born the Donaldson counter-proposal. Cleverly worded, it echoed the demands coming from the likes of Mandelson and Seamus Mallon last January for clarity and certainty from the IRA.
The right buttons were pressed by stressing the objectives of devolution, disarmament and party unity. Whereas the No lobby had been inclined to alienate the middle ground with hardline demands, the clever marketing strategy in the Donaldson plan was to attract the broadest possible constituency with the moderate-sounding call for decommissioning before the formation of an executive, followed by total disarmament to an agreed timetable.
Trimble had to reject it, and he did. His tone in doing so was perhaps ill-chosen. The former Queen's University law lecturer marked Undergraduate Donald son's essay harshly, with a C- and a scrawled note at the bottom, "Could do better".
The slightly patronising tone was not the best: this was an occasion for over-praising a backward student who was at last showing signs of promise but still had a long way to go.
The number of doubters, like one of Agatha Christie's novels, keeps reducing all the time. Some estimates ranged as low as 20 yesterday. They were far outnumbered by the canvassers knocking on their doors or tracking them down by telephone. Not so much Six Characters in Search of an Author as Six Unionists in Search of a Delegate.
There will be quiet but palpable tension this morning, with substitutes waiting to seize the admission slips of delegates who decide to stay away. Like the American Civil War, you can nominate someone to go in your place.
Brave journalists who had seen service through the Troubles years and covered stories while the bullets flew were quailing at the prospect of having to predict the outcome.
Let it be recorded that the No camp was in much better form last night than 24 hours before. The Donaldson plan had instilled them with new hope.
But Mr Trimble and his friends were not idle and sought to halt any drift back towards the Young Pretender. Trimble supporters might have been excused for feeling that John Taylor, the deputy leader, had been playing truant all week but the word was that he would be flying in from Taiwan and was likely to support his colleague from Upper Bann.
The No people were still claiming Taylor for their own, however. The future of unionist politics, and much else besides, hung in the balance.
Later in the evening, Verdi's Aida will be performed at the Waterfront, but what the publicity material rightly calls "a compelling story of jealousy, treachery and divided loyalties" will have nothing on the show which starts at the same venue this morning at 10 a.m.