Tony Blair always commands respect at the annual Labour Party Conference because he wins elections. But there was a point during his speech at last week’s conference when respect turned into love. It was when Blair went off-script to tell an anecdote about his two oldest sons going out canvassing. It went like this.

‘On one doorstep they met a bloke who unleashed a stream of abuse about their Dad. When Euan got a word in edgeways he told the bloke who they were. Immediately he said: ‘I’m really sorry, son. Come in and have a cup of tea. I didn’t mean all that.’ Delegates laughed and Blair shook his head: ‘That’s what the British people are like. They are good people.’

As far back as 1996 it was reported that Blair had sought help from the comedian Rory Bremner to enliven his conference speech. But Blair has Les Dawson to thank for the joke at this year’s conference that sent the delegates into convulsions…and defused the row over Cherie Blair.

The previous day’s headlines had been about the way Cherie had accused Gordon Brown of lying when he said what a great privilege it was to work with Tony Blair. She denied the remark but the damage was done. Tony Blair insisted that humour was the best way to deal with the issue.

Before Blair left for the conference hall someone recalled Dawson’s joke: ‘My wife has run off with the bloke next door. I’m going to miss him!’ Alistair Campbell quickly said: ‘That’s it. There is no danger of Cherie running off with the bloke next door.’ The whole team fell about laughing and Blair immediately bought the idea. It was a risk but it worked to perfection…and left Blair’s team wishing they had tried humour the day before.

When Ronald Reagan first arrived on the political scene in America and campaigned for Governor of California he was mocked by the East Coast Intelligentsia. A decade later when he ran for the US Presidency liberal elites the world over joined in the mockery. An actor! What does he know!

But they were behind the times. Two decades later Bill Clinton and Tony Blair are often talked of in Hollywood terms…Oscar-winning performance, fake sincerity, command of his brief…in recognition that acting ability is an integral part of the modern politician’s bag of tricks.

But something else that came to prominence with Ronald Reagan was his mastery of comic timing. If you are over 40 you can probably still remember Reagan’s ‘There you go again!’ to President Jimmy Carter in the Televised Presidential Debates. Afterwards it was widely claimed that these four little words won Reagan the presidency. And his ‘Aw shucks, sorry guys, I forgot to duck’ to his bodyguards after he was shot…and very nearly assassinated…is the stuff of legends. Blair too is a master of the art of the self-effacing remark and the telling…and witty…anecdote.

But this is no longer an Anglo-Saxon preserve. Rowan Atkinson made a big impression on the newly elected Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt. As a teenager in a lower middle-class area of Stockholm he fell under the spell of the rubber-faced Englishman and his co-jesters on Not the Nine O’Clock News….so much so that Reinfeldt was inspired to take to the stage and was named best comedian of the year at his school. Where will it all end?

From William of Normandy in 1066 to Dwight Eisenhower in 1944, England’s fortunes have been hostage to the weather. The ferocious winter of 1941-42 was an ordeal for the long-suffering English Speaking Peoples of these war-torn European Offshore Islands cowering in their air-raid shelters. But for Nazi Germany it was a catastrophe. Its impact on their invasion of Russia was as devastating as the storms that scattered the Spanish Armada.

At the end of 1941 temperatures on the continent dropped to minus forty…the same number in Centigrade and Fahrenheit…machinery froze and hundreds of thousands of troops froze to death. Hitler’s Blitzkrieg was stopped dead in its tracks. The Nazi Military Machine never recovered and was destroyed at Stalingrad. We were very lucky.

Two years ago Swiss climatologists figured that Hitler should have consulted his Argentinean Agents instead of his Astrology Charts. Then he would have seen it coming. A strong El Niño set off the disturbances in the stratosphere. This surged like a wave across the globe and created the extreme conditions in Europe. Wonderful stuff hindsight.

But with stories like this doing the rounds it is no wonder that the Global Supremacy Boys show such a keen interest in Climate Meddling. It will all end in tears. But put out enough propaganda and the idiots will put down the ensuing disasters to Global Warming…and dig deep into the Public Purse to solve the problem by redoubling the Kyoto Carbon Emission Targets. Useful Idiots was Lenin’s phrase for people who could be fooled all of the time.

A study from the Supporters of Nuclear Energy, the Society of Motor Manufacturers, the European Chemicals Association or the American Petroleum Institute will normally be broadly supportive of the issuer’s publicly stated positions…otherwise the report will be hidden away in a bottom drawer. Normal people bear this in mind.

The same is true for reports from the World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace, the Soil Association, the International Society for Ecology & Culture or The Ecologist. More enlightened people bear this in mind…in much the same way. Leaks and Whistle Blowing complicate matters because some is bottom drawer stuff…and some is disinformation.

Whatever the source, an Act of Discernment is required to discriminate between Fact and Truth on the one hand and Prejudice and Untruth on the other. Whether any particular individual is capable of Right Discernment is another matter…the discernment of a Third Party might be called upon.

Governments once provided such a service by taking the Public View. They were the Competent Receiver of the Common Wealth and the Impartial Discriminator of the Common Sense. But no longer. Nowadays Government are rightly seen as just another Outside Interest Group…with their own Special Pleadings and their own Private Agendas. So who is sound? Where resides Common Sense?

In these days of public relations, media manipulation and advertising, Front Organisations distribute results and a Tied Tenancy carries out the studies. Scientific Research is tuned by the Piper’s Patrons. The Congress of Racial Equality, the Rowntree Foundation, Scientific Alliance, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation? Where do they stand? Who do they represent? These are not disinterested bodies. They have their own agendas…some of them open and some of them hidden…and they have paymasters with other agendas. What to do?

Virtualisation is the Next Big Thing in computing…and the Mighty Microsoft will embrace it to survive in the operating system market. But the leader in the technology is Xensource…a spin-out from Cambridge University’s Computer Laboratory housed in the William Gates Building…and Xen’s core technology is Open Source. Ouch! To Microsofties, Open Source is still viewed as the spawn of the communist devil. Annihilate! Annihilate!

An accommodation will be reached…deal-making is a Microsoft speciality…and Xensource stock will go through the roof. Put the phone down! It’s no use calling your broker. You’ve missed the boat already. John Doerr the world’s greatest venture capitalist…with a track record in Sun Microsystems, Compaq, Lotus, Intuit, Genentech, Millennium, Netscape, Amazon and Google to name just a few…got there before you. Valuable stuff hindsight.