Fringe show with all the trimmings Isolated left goes beyond the fringe Left is forced to fight on fringe Left forced on to fringe issues

Despite all its artful stage management, this week's Labour Party conference has been full of the unexpected.

For a start there was the sight, in the education debate, of Roy Hattersley casting himself as the darling of the left, and earning a standing ovation - for audacity if nothing else. Then there was the woman outside the centre who positioned herself among the gauntlet of activists pressing leaflets - about live exports, freedom for Kashmir, or the Young Fabians Social - on reluctant delegates. Her purpose was to yell her political demand: "make ballet underwear compulsory for two hours a day".

She was not the only one pre-occupied with idiosyncrasies. On the fringe the most unlikely things were being appropriated as party political issues. In a hotel just up the prom from the conference centre yesterday lunchtime, for instance, a woman called Christine Burns was launching a new lobbying organisation.

Ms Burns's point was that though she was a woman, the law did not regard her as one: she had been born a man, and had undergone "gender re-alignment surgery". She called her group Press for Change presumably because someone had already used the name The No Turning Back Group. Her complaints about discrimination against transsexuals were significant: not allowed to have a changed birth certificate, not allowed to marry, not adequately protected against sexual offences. Worse, certain NHS trusts had decided not to continue sex-change operations, as a cost-cutting move. "Which is ridiculous as they represent very good value for money," Ms Burns said. "They only cost between pounds 1,500 and pounds 3,000, depending on the trimmings." Though in the case of this operation, you would have thought the whole point was that trimmings were included.

Sitting beside Ms Burns was Lynne Jones, a distinctly un-Blairite MP, who quickly made party capital out of the issue. "The present government is intransigent on transsexual rights and has refused to recognise it is a government responsibility," Dr Jones said. "As yet there is no Labour policy relating to this issue, but I am hoping to put forward a resolution at next year's conference."

With all the other areas of policy appropriated by the Blairites, the left, it seems, is having to get ever more imaginative in finding causes to call its own. Ms Burns, though, didn't quite see it like that: she confessed to being a member of the Tory party and was going to hold a similar meeting next week in Blackpool. At which point a member of the press, barely able to stifle a snigger, asked which Tory MP she had persuaded to chair the meeting. "Sadly, I haven't found one," was the disappointing answer. This exchange led a delegate to suggest that the biggest problem trans-sexuals face is the media: they just don't realise what harm they cause by taking the piss. So out goes the joke about male prospective Labour MPs taking an interest in this group's activities as their only way of getting on to all-women shortlists.

Another tiny, beleaguered minority group was out lobbying the fringe the previous evening: the privatised utility fat cats. At a cocktail party thrown by the modernising magazine Renewal could be found a director of North West Water. The evening began with a plea by the editor for funds, a plea which Tony Blair, making a fleeting visit, found hard to understand. "Looking round this room," the Labour leader said, casting his eye over the select gathering. "I can see plenty of money to help you." He didn't name names, but North West Water subsidising a Labour publication: now that would be unexpected.