Lucy Fisher

Give us a sense of what you've picked up from voters on the ground.

Yeah.

Well, that's something that I really picked up at a Hustings event hosted by the Manchester Evening News, your old place, Jen, on Wednesday, where Burnham was really trying to walk this tightrope, wasn't he?

In saying that he's a local man, he made clear his children had gone to the college where the event was being hosted.

He made clear that he wouldn't forget where he came from if he got elected and was trying to tailor his messaging both locally to the community here, but also really picking up on themes that have national resonance.

So here's a flavour of how Burnham was really trying to bring that home with the voters on Wednesday.

And then here's Robert Kenyon, the reform candidate, trying to make a similar point that he is the local man who is not trying to, as he would put it, use this constituency as a stepping stone for higher office.

Jim, what have you been picking up since arriving in the sea?

Interestingly, though, Jim, Persis, our producer, and I were at a reform press conference on Wednesday afternoon in which Robert Kenyon, the candidate, was only allowed to speak for just about two minutes before Nigel Farage seized the limelight and spoke for at least half an hour.

And we actually saw a lot of women there supporting reform and interested in reform at this press conference in a car park.

They seemed to be completely unfazed by comments he made online in which he suggested that women can't drive or referee football matches.

I think it was some very vicious comments about abortion, claiming that women use it as a secondary form of birth control so they can sleep around, and also some highly sexualised comments that he endorsed about Carol Vorderman.

But there were a lot of women in the audience there, and we talked to some afterwards, and

And they felt, interestingly, that all the attention that was being brought to Robert Kenyon's past comments on social media was a cynical ploy by other parties, notably Labour and other critics of Kenyon.

They thought it was completely irrelevant what someone had said on social media a decade ago before they had got any interest in going into politics.

And in particular, a lot of voters we've spoken to on the ground have brought up with a sense of chagrin

a leaflet that's come through their door with comments from Carol Vorderman trying to draw attention to that controversy over Robert Kenyon's comments.

And they really don't like that.

It's interesting.

I noticed at the Hustings, Robert Kenyon was at pains to say that he and reform totally back women's rights.