AS any parent will tell you, there are few environments more stressful than a soft play centre teeming with adventurous toddlers.

Add the Deputy Prime Minister to the mix, with a small army of advisors, journalists, security guards, photographers and cameramen in tow, and what you have is a recipe for chaos.

Nick Clegg, who landed his LibDem battlebus at Play Town in Bishopbriggs, played his part by honing in on oblivious cherubs for the obligatory campaign snaps.

But it wasn't long before one of the two elephants in the room - the other being four foot long, stuffed with foam and coated with plastic - reared its head and was put to the Liberal Democrat leader.

A Lord Ashcroft poll, published just hours earlier, had revealed that Mr Clegg was on course for a humiliating defeat in May in his own Sheffield Hallam backyard, where he is two points behind Labour.

But Mr Clegg, who a recent YouGov survey showed had an approval rating with voters of minus 47, insisted he was not worried in part because of his own individual popularity.

"I'm very confident that I will win in Sheffield Hallam," he hit back. "The poll doesn't even mention the candidates' names and our own polling, where we do that, shows that there is a very significant lift for Liberal Democrat MPs when they are named in the poll.

"If you don't believe our poll or the Ashcroft poll look at how people have voted in Sheffield Hallam. Since 2010, there have been 16 local elections in my constituency and we've won 14 of them. Last year, there were five seats contested in Sheffield Hallam, we won four of the five, all with increased majorities.

"I'm not going to be complacent about this, but I'm pretty confident I'm going to win."

And despite his surroundings, there was nothing soft about his words for the SNP, who polls have predicted are set to make sweeping gains on May 7, with the LibDems suffering heavy losses.

"It's clearly going to be a challenge... But that's what elections should be," he said. "I don't think they should be coronations - I know that's the Alex Salmond view of elections, that you should simply take voters for granted and start measuring up the curtains for your Westminster office before the people have cast their vote.

"There's something astonishingly cocky and arrogant about the SNP's approach to politics, where all they talk about is themselves and who they're going to force to do which deal in Westminster before people have even had their say."

Equalities minister Jo Swinson, who is fighting hard to hang on to her East Dunbartonshire constituency in the face of a nationalist surge, tagged along and talked up the Lib Dems' achievements on shared parental leave and a policy on increasing paternity leave, which was, after all, what the whole event was supposed to be about.

But even she could not resist a shot at the Nats. "Lots of people really do not want to see the SNP in, because they voted no in the referendum and think the SNP should listen to what they said," she said, a toddler tugging at her necklace. "It's a close contest, and its going to be tight between myself and the SNP. But I do believe I can win."