It's never a good idea to judge a book from extracts published in a hostile newspaper a few days before important elections. So we should refrain from passing judgement on Lord Levy's memoirs, A Question of Honour, of which the Mail on Sunday gave us a sample yesterday. One bit interested me. I'll come to that.
All the same, I was struck by Nick Robinson's unusually calm tone on Radio 4 this morning, suggesting that it is far too soon to predict the next general election and that, if this was the worst Lord Levy could throw at Gordon Brown, it is "not too bad".
That seems admirably, indeed tediously sensible. Nick would rarely get on air if he were normally so level-headed. But we did glean some titbits from the MoS, for instance how Cherie Blair conducted her long-running feud (very up front) with Anji Hunter, Tony's teenage chum and No 10 aide.
And how Tony jumped up and down shouting: "I'm prime minister, I did it, I did it" in 1997 when he thought no one was watching except Michael Levy, trusted fundraiser and tennis partner.
Then there was the less-than-shocking news that Blair expressed doubts that Brown can beat Cameron unless he changes, which Gordon will find hard.
I am sure that bit is true, despite the ritual overnight denials; it sounds true. With rare exceptions - leaders always think that way about their successors, think Ted, Maggie, John etc. They're often right, too.
Myself, I couldn't get as sweaty and excited as Mail executives about Levy's story that No 10 officials asked him to warn Blair that there was talk in the servants' quarters about those "long massages" he was said - said - to be getting from Carole Caplin, Cherie's lifestyle guru and, later, a Mail punditte.
There were lots of comic stories around at the time about Carole's magic stones, mud baths and showers. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, as the Pythons used to say.
But by and large, stories that everyone else is at it like rabbits all the time tend to be untrue (except when they are true, you can never tell). That was the Python joke's whole point. What I ask myself is "would a woman like Cherie Blair tolerate that sort of caper for a moment?" No, she would not.
The bit from the Levy extracts which caught my fancy wasn't Carole at all but Labour's treasurer, Jack (husband of Hattie) Dromey, and an enormous six-footer called Detective Sergeant Paul Kelsey.
He's the copper who interviewed Lord Levy twice at Colindale nick in 2006, 170 questions about things the fundraiser and others had said and done in the alleged loans-for-peerages affair, plus some lively extracts from the diary of Sir Christopher Evans, less-than-shy bio-tech entrepreneur and donor.
It sounds unpleasant and was no doubt meant to be. But, even allowing for Levy's partisan account, it doesn't strike this reader that Mr Yates's team of detectives had much to go on.
As with Donorgate - the collapse of which investigation you will (not) have seen widely reported this morning - the case wasn't going very far.
The cops were just doing what they're trained to do, play one prospect off against the others, and, when necessary, to leak whatever they find in the hope it may help matters along.
Jack Dromey's role is more interesting. You may recall he announced that he knew nothing of these horrid loans at a crucial moment - not least a vote on Blair's controversial schools bill - and thereby dropped Levy and No 10 deeper into the cart.
At the time there were suspicions that he was acting at the behest of Team Gordon, a view which Levy now says that Blair also believed: it was part of the "coup".
What is now clearer to me is that Dromey was chiefly saving his own neck. On the phone, says Levy, the party Treasurer told him he hadn't accused anyone of deceiving him: not how it came across at the time.
Levy says he reminded Dromey that the loans were all in the accounts - if Master Jack had bothered to read them.
Oh yes, and that Brown and his minions knew what was going on with the loans. Indeed Levy had been mightily offended when No 10 tried to insert Brown's moneybags, Sir Ronnie Cohen, into the fundraising network to help him out.
They just tried to stay clear of the shit when it hit the fan. Hence Blair's "liar'' complaint - also likely to be true.
That also figures. Brown's role as Labour's McCavity the Mystery Cat - the one who's rarely there when trouble strikes - is pretty well-documented.
A generous interpretation would be that he was Blair's spare tyre, unblemished and waiting to take over if Blair was politically killed in a car crash. But does that make his and Dromey's actions a plot?
Conspiracy theories can say "cui bono?" - who benefits? - as I sometimes do in this case.
Thanks to the media hype and police probes, the taxpayer has spent a lot of money not prosecuting people - a decision to do so would probably have wasted even more money.
No result? Not at all. Of course, there was a result. Blair has gone into quiet(ish) retirement. Brown is now PM, Mrs Dromey is his deputy party leader.
But Labour is near bankrupt, the Tories (who invented the loans caper) are rolling in cash and ahead in all the polls.
All the same, I doubt if Brown is that much of a schemer, let alone that good a schemer. It's not that his temperament is not a plotter's temperament. But you can usually see him coming, his dust cloud visible across the baking political plain. If he did it, he helped wreck his own inheritance. Unlikely, I think.
As for Michael Levy, ministers who worked with him tell me he was quick to take offence, needed to be treated with kid gloves, but brilliant at what he did.
I hardly know him, but once watched him work a room: schmoozing may be the appropriate word. When he got briefly to me I said "You treat everyone as if it was their bar mitzvah." At that point I think he put his arm round me and made me feel special.
No, he didn't ask me for a donation, let alone hint at that knighthood which so many Guardian posters want me to get. He DOESN'T DO THAT!
Besides, these fundraisers have an instinct about who's good for £50k, £500K. And I expect Lord Sainsbury was in the room, just itching to be groped.
