Diary: Tell them you saved a conservative.

REALLY? ..In fact it was from me. Also it was Tony Blair, who is in the Labour Party apparently, and not a true blue conservative.

Blair famously carries a copy of the Bible and the Koran when he travels. Given that the former concerns a man known as the Prince of Peace and the other a famous warrior you wonder who had more influence on our Tony.

It was before he was Prime Minister. Hopes were high after the Thatcher years and he was not yet such a disappointment. I had no real expectation of sudden redistribution of wealth etc. but who could have predicted following Bush into Iraq? Right up to invasion I was thinking this is a magnificent bluff.

I was sure the adolescent years of watching body counts on the news would have meant it impossible for anyone of our generation to contemplate joining military action so hastily, with the same people that gave us My Lai. (Colin Powell was involved in the investigation at the time.)

Anyway, I was young and fit and could have thumped him a good one when I shook his hand in Auchterarder. I didn?t. If I had they would have simply thought I?d gone mad, as I was such a keen Labour supporter. It would have been a soft asylum and I?d be out by now.