Stourbridge doesn't really do headlines.
Back in the early 1990s the town enjoyed a brief moment in the spotlight – at least in the lava lamp-lit bedrooms of NME readers - when a surprisingly large number of local bands scraped their way onto the lower rungs of the music charts.
Two decades on, I'm willing to guess that the youth of Stourbridge aren't overly familiar with the work of Ned's Atomic Dustbin or The Wonderstuff, but the media spotlight has returned to follow the slightly less glamorous forms of the three main candidates seeking election to Westminster next Thursday.
With Labour's Lynda Waltho is clinging to a painfully thin majority of 407, the town has been placed 25th in the Conservative Party's list of must-win target seats.
If the Tories win Stourbridge, then the likelihood is that Britain will wake up to a Conservative government on the morning of May 7.
Lose it, and the wilderness beckons for both party and, quite possibly, their leader David Cameron, who has a vested interest in the success or failure of Margot James, his party's candidate in Stourbridge.
Since her selection as the local candidate in 2006, James has emerged as one of the highest-profile products of the Conservatives Party's A-list of candidates and therefore a symbol of Cameron's modernising push.
Much has been made of her former Notting Hill address, her closeness to the leadership, and the millions she made through a successful business career – thought not, James insists, by the people of Stourbridge who are "not interested in that and are impressed by the work I have done here."
Party insiders tip her for big things should she become an MP, but the challenge for James – and for her party – is getting her to Westminster in the first place.
She lost as a "part-time candidate" in 2005, challenging Frank Dobson in the safe Labour seat Holborn and St Pancras; the pressure, and work-rate, is rather more intense this time.
"My commitment to winning is so great that nothing could be added to the pressure that I have always put on myself", she insists.
"The media interest adds pressure. It takes time out and you don't get much for it to be honest, especially when it's national media."
If that was a criticism then James has the charm to mask it. However, charm and hard work won't be quite enough to win the seat.
Given its importance, it's little surprise to hear that Lord Ashcroft – James has been given "a small amount of money in the past from the party's marginal seats fund to which Ashcroft donates" – is said to have helped the James cause.
I was expecting a barrage of 'Vote James' imagery when I pulled into the station, but the first Stourbridge house I reached was plastered with posters of support for the local Labour candidate who, the local taxi driver tells me, is working overtime to resist the Tory challenge.
Today's lunchtime battleground is in a small lecture hall at King Edward VI College, which has already played host to appearances by all three party leaders on the BBC's Politics Show.
Judging by the reaction of some of the college's most promising politics students, Gordon Brown, Cameron, or Nick Clegg emerged as a clear winner, but David Cameron – who I'm told took a little more time over his make up than engaging with the students – appears to have left the audience most uninspired, leaving James has a battle on her hands today.
Appropriately enough she arrives wearing camouflaged combat trousers and looking in fighting form.
She stands not far off six foot, but – as the endless national profiles testify – she mixes the imposing physical presence with considerable glamour.
She later tells me that she has followed Boris Johnson's lead in giving up alcohol for the duration of the campaign.
"I won't have another drink until after the result is declared. Giving up has given me more energy and vitality, and I'm sleeping better."
Her well-groomed appearance contrasts sharply with the trainer and chinos-wearing Liberal Democrat candidate Chris Brammall who, to the audience's amusement, apologises for having left his suit at the dry cleaners.
Waltho meanwhile is working the front row and shaking as many hands as she can reach, but once the opening statements are underway she quickly turns on the "the glib talk of David Cameron".
At roughly the same time, a few hundred miles north in Rochdale, her own leader was engaging in some vary careless talk with a "bigoted lady". In contrast, glib might seem rather more desirable.
The first question is on voter apathy, prompting rambling answers from all three.
Waltho's bizarrely long assessment of the expenses scandal seems to be the most baffling, but one mature audience member breaks out in ferocious applause – Waltho's agent is working overtime.
Brammall then enjoyed his moment of glory when confirming that he has signed the pledge to axe tuition fees (James has to admit that she hasn't).
But when a question on civil liberties leaves him engaging in an unsavoury spat with Waltho - "ID cards are not compulsory -- They aren't, but they will be tomorrow -- It might snow tomorrow" - James was able to look rather more composed than her rivals.
However, the overall impression of the would-be-MPs is hardly impressive.
"They were bickering all the time – it was negative, they were against each other. They had a very good opportunity to get to lots of students, but they didn't really tackle issues that concern students", reflected Rob Craik, one of the college's politics students.
After today's showing, he predicts a hung Parliament. Is that a good thing? "Well, after that I couldn't see them working together."
Sonia Khan, a fellow student, is equally unimpressed.
"They avoided the questions a lot of the time. It was quite immature– the negative campaigning takes the focus away from their own policies. They need to step it up in the next few days."
The view is shared by Simran Hans, albeit a little more apologetically.
"I don't want to say this, because I want to have faith in politicians, but I don't think any of them particularly came across that well. They just seemed to waffle on so much."
She describes James as "very polished" but, heeding Peter Mandelson's warning that voters who flirt with Nick Clegg would wake up with David Cameron, she explains that her vote will be for Labour and the "approachable" Lynda Waltho
Over a cup of tea in a nearby staff room, James unsurprisingly tells me that the event went well, despite admitting that some of the answers – the audience fitted in just five questions in an hour - were too long.
Responding to the students' allegations, she admits that there is a "fine line between holding the government on account and being negative – all my literature has been positive", but is a little happier to dismiss her rivals when she adds that "arguing the toss over minute policy detail is a hopeless of way of conducting debate."
Earlier she had been asked by a student what she would do if there were a hung parliament.
While she couldn't compromise on the economy she "could warm" to Lib Dem ideas on constitutional reform, James replied, adding: "You have to work together."
Does the hung parliament question surface on the doorstep? She says not.
"I hope there isn't one, and people are more concerned about who they will vote for rather than the machinations of any potential hung parliament. They're interested in the economy, employment and immigration."
She insists that the poll bounce enjoyed by the Lib Dems since the first televised debate is not hurting the Conservative challenge in Stourbridge, and remains relaxed – though hardly effusive - about the leadership debates
"I won't comment on whether my party should have agreed to the TV debates, and it was a decision taken at much a more senior level. You can't get every call right, but in general I think they have been a good thing."
So will she be watching tonight's debate?
"Oh yes. I watch in nervous anticipation and I really feel for my man, but I'm embarrassed to say that I'll be watching it on video.
"I've been invited to the Stourbridge annual beer festival to join the tasting panel to find the local town's bitter of the year."
I'm not too sure how that fits in with the enforced abstinence, but, as I make my way towards the station I pass a pub with a simply incredible name: Labour in Vain.
I didn't have time to sample its range of bitters, but it seems an appropriate venue for either a drowning of sorrows or a celebratory beer for Margot James come the early hours of May 7.
Sam Macrory is features editor of The House Magazine.
