Was reinvigorating atrophied limbs at the Hammersmith Virgin Active (they must give them silver ring things or sumfink) this morning and as is the case when you're disenchantedly pounding away to music, the TV screens assumed greater interest.
On Sky Sports ex Scummer midfield hero and sweat dodger Matt Le Tissier was leading the field on a Spanish fairway with legendary ex Spurs and Arsenal goalkeeper Pat Jennings and a horde of n'eer do wells including Perry Digweed and Carlton Palmer trailing behind.
With only MTV and Jeremy Kyle's Chav Academy (?) separating this lugubriously paced yawn fest Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger (whose arms probably do still resemble Clive James' vivid description of a condom stuffed with walnuts) was sharing a podium with a demob happy, gurning and churning Right Hon Tony Blair.
Not wanting to listen overly much to whatever was being said lest it put me out of stride after hearing the words 'middle east' I'd happily hazard a guess it was just the usual daily rigmarole of our charismatic, Weberian leader sincerely reaching out directly to the people without mediation of the TV, press and political community etc to announce a new non job in bringing peace to the Arabs, Persians and Jews.
Didn't we have the perfectly coiffured tennis mad Lord Levy for such purposes? Maybe the ominously sounding and ill defined 'Quartet', (as in a string quartet or Alexander Durrell's 'Alexandria Quartet. I had a friend who continually confused him with better known animal loving brother Laurence and he was perfectly civil with it) have a grander, more cinematic vision for how these complex and tenuously fragile dialogues should most decorously be conducted.
But this is not to discount that the Fatah party could benefit from the sort of tax loopholes that gave Alvin Stardust freedom to enjoy a life safe from fear of joining the panto circuit.
And better Quartet rather than the ghastly mishmash of Aliens Quadrilogy - it's Tetralogy don'cher know for that sort of thing, see Parades End in its original four volumes rather than the trilogy Graham Greene reduced it to.
But in all reality this is what it's come down to - Post Celebrity Peace Making to shore up George W Bush's position against a fractious Congress and Senate in the heat of an electoral campaign where support for the status quo in Iraq supported by hope for the success of the surge, as evinced by George McCain's travails, simply doesn't work.
Tony Blair's sincere desire for peace and reconciliation between the people of the three Abrahamic faiths must not be discounted. His track record in bring reconciliation and a semblance of normality to political life in Ireland is proof that he can do this sort of thing.
It's just his all too human inability to understand that who he is, somebody who appears to listen only when seeking to win over support but is bolstered by a sense of being always right and never wrong in any event, let alone what he has done or suffered to happen in actual middle East policy makes him wholly inappropriate for the task.
He'd be more profitably employed getting those first drafts of the autobiography 'I was right, they were wrong' typed up, pick up the Congressional Medal and hit the lecture circuit so that BAE don't have to resort to renting out the new pad behind Marble Arch.
This job is best left to the professionals. I saw at the same time as Blair and Arnie a man of total dignity and self-knowledge, who has forged a successful portfolio second career, who never cares or cared what the world thinks of him or of being right, a man who lives in the present to give the world a better future by giving it his all in a tumble of limbs and effort.
Ladies and gentlemen, I suggest as special envoy tasked with restoring peace to the middle east the one and only Carlton Palmer.
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