Tony Blair was back on our screens last week. Is it really only three years? He looks  and sounds different, a too tanned mid-Atlantic sales director with a new ‘I’m tough’ body language, sitting legs akimbo with an over-long tie for decorum. What hasn’t changed is Blair the actor.

As expected it was a masterful performance but one which polarised the reviewers. At one end of the scale was Euan Ferguson in the Observer. “He was charm personifed, sharply funny, deeply articulate, capable in bursts of honest humanity, with charisma coming out of his ears”.

At the other end the ever waspish Quentin Letts. “A gluey performance with all the old tricks, he hasn’t forgotten a thing. Don’t fall for  the grinning egomaniac  preacher man again”.

Whichever way you look it was a very slick pitch for the book, a snakeoil salesman at the top of his game.