Review: Tony Blair Rock Star

"I have a dream," said Tony Blair, one-fiftieths leader of the free world. "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and throw knickers at my, y'know, interpretation of Satisfaction. It was... the people's Satisfaction." Legal note: No, he didn't. Moving on.

Last night's C4 comdramrockumentary (if you will) Tony Blair Rock Star was brilliantly silly, though the producers seemed desperate for us to notice their running gag.

"He had a kind of bendiness about him," recalled one public schoolboy pal (snigger). "He put butter in his hair," recalled another (Teflon Tony, geddit?) "He definitely said he was going to stay for a day and it worked out being two weeks. He just didn't go," said another. See, it's just like... yes.

That's not to say that TBRS wasn't more than worth an hour of your telly time, even when it was up against the welcome return of House over on Five. (That's why videos were invented.) The in-joke may have been overplayed, but it did raise plenty of smirks -- such as when Christian Brassington's Baby Blair made perfect "Blair noises" and kept his perpetual grin during a Fettes caning.

Friends spoke of the teen Tony's "puppy-like enthusiasm," of the way he "made you feel you were the only person in the world he was interested in talking to," of his acting skills and of the charisma that meant "he could have started his own church quite easily."

Then came was the audio tape of 17-year-old rock promoter Tony telling his audience of posh West London sixth-formers: "Excuse me, the canteen's now closing so, if you want to get something you'd better get it now." He sounded like an earnest but slightly shy Brownie. My, how he's changed.

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