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A Tory minister is reportedly set to deliver a party conference speech as a hologram in a bid to make the event ‘less dreary’.

Culture Secretary Jeremy Wright is being lined up to follow in the footsteps of Tupac, Freddie Mercury, Michael Jackson and Princess Leia at this year’s Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham.

The newly minted Culture and digital boss is notoriously technophobic.

During more than 13 years in Parliament, prior to being made Culture Secretary, he said the word “digital” twice.

And before taking the job, his official Twitter account had only five tweets, including retweets.

But according to the Sunday Times, he’s set to embrace the future of…well, Coachella 2012, and deliver his keynote at the party’s annual gathering in virtual form.

(Image: Getty Images North America) (Image: Getty)

Perhaps the oddest thing about the idea, cooked up by his predecessor Matt Hancock before he was promoted to Health Secretary - is that there’s really no reason for it.

Where holograms have been used in the past, it’s been for reasons of death or intergalactic civil war.

But unless a Tory Secretary of State has taken the unusual step of double booking himself the week of conference, he’ll just…be there anyway.

He could even watch his own speech from the audience.

(Image: BBC)

A source close to Mr Wright told the Times: “He understands the need to embrace this kind of developing technology.”

If the effect is created in the same way as previous on-stage holograms, the "developing technology" is a technique known as "Pepper's Ghost" - developed by Henry Pepper in 1862.

The trick uses glass and projections to create the illusion of a ghostly object or figure appearing on stage.

It's been used frequently in Disneyland theme parks since the 1950s.

Of course, there is one member of the party who might wish she could have delivered her speech remotely last year.