Hilton Dawson is MP for Lancaster and early-years parenting is evidently one of his interests. "But I wouldn't have been able to get to this talk had it been outside central London," he admits. Then, looking around the high-ceilinged room with its pilastered walls, he adds: "I'm rather envious of this place on Lancaster's behalf. Our university could do with a base like this." One day, perhaps, but no plans yet. Others, however, have followed Warwick's lead and acquired outposts in the great metropolis. Manchester recently took out a lease on a tall terraced building opposite Sainsbury's on Southampton Street, Covent Garden. Nottingham has just acquired premises in Berners Street, Soho. Birmingham University is to have a presence in the offices being set up in Westminster by the city council.

"Our vice-principal is a public policy professor who has been a very effective lobbyist on our behalf," says Birmingham University's director of communications, Sue Primmer. "But having a London presence will be useful. We have a vested interest in getting across the message in the capital that Birmingham is not just a gritty, post-industrial city with a shiny shop [Selfridge's]. We have world-leading research, great music and great art."

Birmingham, Manchester and Nottingham are redbrick universities that grew organically from the cities they were founded to serve. A century later, they are jockeying for position in a market-driven higher education sector.

"Everything is becoming much more competitive," says Nottingham University's director of public affairs, Phillip Dalling. "We feel that having premises in London would be helpful, particularly with regard to our international activities. Our China Policy Institute think-tank will be based there."

And Manchester? "Although we use our building predominantly for teaching, we also find it useful in terms of lobbying and recruitment," says media relations manager John Keighren. "We needed a strategy to counter the slight decline in the number of students we're attracting from London and the south-east. Research has suggested that school leavers from Greater London have great trouble pinpointing Manchester on a map."

Warwick's position is rather different from that of the redbricks, insofar as it was founded only 40 years ago on the edge of a city that doesn't carry its name. "Our relationship with Coventry is very good," director of communication Ian Rowley insists. "And we're not in London because the region isn't good enough," he goes on. "It's just that we happen to live in a country that is still incredibly metro-centric. The vice-chancellor can invite prominent figures to give talks on campus, but the audience will be predominantly local. It hit home to me when Chris Woodhead came here to speak, about three months after he left Ofsted. Had his talk been in central London, there would have been at least half a dozen national journalists there."

Four years have passed since Warwick took the plunge and opened metropolitan premises in Tufton Street, near the DfES. It was there that Robin Cook, when he was foreign secretary, made his headline-grabbing speech about chicken tikka masala being Britain's new national dish.

"All too quickly we outgrew Tufton Street," Rowley recalls. "We needed somewhere bigger with more flexible spaces. Somewhere to put on bigger lectures and offer some catering. Somewhere for our many south-east-based alumni to gather for social functions. And somewhere for our academics to work when they're in London. No more opening laptops in Starbucks."

All the same, property in SW1 does not come cheap. Rowley is reluctant to disclose a figure but puts the cost at the annual equivalent of two junior teaching posts. "We lease it," he says, "from the Work Foundation. Universities can learn a lot from think-tanks like the WF about disseminating blue-chip research. And they're very good at building networks and allegiances."

It helps, of course, when parliament and the seat of government are a brisk stroll or a short taxi-drive away. Yet, ironically, the most powerful politician ever encountered by Warwick University made the effort to go to Coventry. To be more accurate, William Jefferson Clinton was advised to go there during his last presidential visit to the UK. The president and, indeed, his daughter may have studied at Oxford but, when it came to delivering his valedictory speech on globalisation, the Warwick campus was the chosen venue.

Why? "Because," according to Rowley, "they wanted the backdrop of a modern rather than a historic university - one that felt part of the future rather than the past." And who were "they"? New Labour image-builders, obviously conscious that Clinton's close friend would be travelling with him. Some chap called Blair. It may have been over an hour from London, but there was no shortage of national journalists on that occasion.