Sketch By Ben Davies BBC News political reporter

Even TUC general secretary Brendan Barber has a laugh at conference

Lefties are often portrayed as scruffy and a bit humourless but you don't have to spend too much time at the TUC conference to realise that this is mostly an ill-deserved stereotype.

To test the theory that it is possible to be rather left wing and also blessed with the gift of laughter, there seemed no better place to start than the Morning Star rally.

Former voice of the British Communist Party, the Star still has links in that direction but has taken on a broader role now as a voice of the labour movement.

It is because of its detailed and year-round coverage of union matters the rally can always boast a good selection of speakers.

Not even a cuppa

This year it was the T&G's Tony Woodley, Amicus' Derek Simpson plus Ruth Winters of the FBU and Mark Serwotka of PCS - all smartly dressed.

Now the Star is a publication with a modest income and it was something of a disappointment on the lunchtime fringe to find it could not stretch to sandwiches - nor even, as Mr Woodley remarked, a cuppa.

Sponsorship would be forthcoming by next year's conference, he pledged generously, before begging the paper's editor to stop using the same picture every time they did a story about the T&G.

"You make me look like something out of Quatermass," he said before going to point out a fact that is hard to ignore at the TUC conference.

A lot of delegates are, well, past the first flush of youth, to put it mildly.

"I'm middle aged and I'm usually one of the younger ones around - we're like the church, we're running out of parishioners," he joked, to much self-deprecating laughter around the room.

Gags and gaffers

And that is a theme that keeps on coming up at the TUC. Unions used to have a membership of 13.7 million in 1979 - and it's less than half that now.

Mr Woodley believes the reason is partly to do with too much sucking up to the "gaffer and the government".

Mr Simpson meanwhile told a joke about football which bombed before confiding he wasn't really very good at soccer gags.

On a more serious note he said unions had to match international business trends by going global.

"We need to develop an international trade union movement to cope with the flow of international capital," he said before arguing a merger with the T&G and GMB would allow one voice to represents hundreds of thousands of workers and end unnecessary competition.

The only people who should fear such an amalgamation were "New Labour acolytes" who wanted to ensure their legacy after Tony Blair had gone, those who had "sweetheart agreements" with managers and anyone trying to "get their arse on a red piece of leather, if you know what I mean".