Arriving 10 minutes ahead of the start time did not, as I had assumed, secure me a choice of vantage points. The lecture theatre was nearly bursting, and although I just about found a seat, more people arrived in a steady flow for the next half hour.

It turned out that a resulting scrum of audience members perched on the stairs and sat cross-legged by the door could be put down to the presence of one Owen Jones.

The political writer and author of Chavs, and The Establishment arrived late to a warm reception, headphones still in his ears. Despite obviously being the main attraction, Owen Jones seemed eternally keen for people to listen to his points rather than focus on his fame, channelling Jeremy Corbyn from the off.

First to speak was Louise Ridley, ex-Goldsmiths student and Assistant News Editor at the Huffington Post, who came from a media rather than political angle. She provided a valuable lack of bias, detailing various articles that placed particular emphasis on Corbyn’s age. She illustrated the lack of focus to the media attacks, which painted Corbyn first as a doddery old fool, and then as a threat to the country’s security. This in turn made a mockery of the media’s legitimacy but it also showed how unrelenting some were prepared to be especially as this is only in the infancy of his leadership.

Next Owen Jones took the mic. As host of one of the only fair and honest interviews I had heard with Corbyn, he was unsurprisingly hugely in support of the new Labour leader. He spoke about the need for grassroots work in a campaign like this, and stressed that, in his opinion, it wouldn’t be seen as ‘compromising’ to develop an intelligent media strategy. He built on an earlier point from Ridley, that the most appropriate platform for this campaign was television and radio appearances. This, he said, would help to get Corbyn’s message across while minimising the possibility for manipulation, such as the widely-used ‘Bin-Laden’s death is a tragedy’ misquote.

The next speaker, Andy McSmith, an experienced journalist, and a name I was familiar with from the Independent, made the first foray into anti-Corbyn territory; brave - given most in the audience were supporters. In his opinion, Jeremy Corbyn is totally unelectable and, although he expressed discontent at the unfairness of the media attacks, it was hard to forget that one of these attacks came from McSmith himself (though admittedly it was a much more intelligent and coherent argument than most).

Perhaps, as a lefty myself, I couldn’t believe that McSmith’s pride hadn’t been at least a little wounded after Corbyn won the Labour leadership. Also, like much of his cohort, he raised Michael Foot as a comparison - I still can’t quite make the connection.

By far the most pacy and intriguing portion of the talk was a ‘questions from the floor’ discussion. A point was raised that the room’s respect for Jeremy Corbyn came from his refusal to pander to a biased media, and that his lack of media strategy could in itself constitute an effective strategy. Jones again countered that intelligently ‘playing the system’ did not equate to ‘selling out’.

He continued with an excellent point that we were, ourselves, a biased audience, and one that was not an accurate microcosm of British society. There is always a risk when parleying with people who already mainly agree with you that the room will become an echo chamber; one that repeats hopeful socialist hobby-politics to an obliging left-leaning middle class. Harsh but true.

Although there was no conclusive winner (perhaps Jones had even before he had even arrived), and although many disagreed on the meat of the politics, the panel agreed on a few clear pointers for Corbyn. The first was to simplify his rhetoric in order to extend a hand to the masses, rather than just this conceptual middle-class echo chamber. Another was to push his anti-austerity economic experts into the public eye in order to debunk Tory economics, something which is certainly statistically supportable.

There seemed to emerge a pragmatic ‘extreme’ who, regardless of their politics, had already decided that Corbyn’s campaign was doomed, and in contrast a hopeful surge of people believing they may catapult him into Number 10 through their will alone.

I would end by saying that a “pragmatic middle” might be the winning combination for those wishing to help Corbyn, in spite of the media. Perhaps if the ground-up effect swells enough, it will become impossible for the press to ignore, and they will have to concede that his support base might just be strong enough.