Gob almighty: Tommy Sheridan at a press conference last October. Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images
How the mighty have stumbled. No matter whether you agreed with his ultra-leftist views while he was convener of the Scottish Socialist Party, you can't argue that Tommy Sheridan was an impassioned and rousing orator when in full flow, his vocal presence on the frontlines at anti-Trident, anti-war and anti-council tax demos the kind of proactive intent you wish more MPs would commit to - even if they did often find him on the wrong side of the law.
But now, after a nationally-publicised court case against the News of the World, a resulting acrimonious split from the SSP to form his own Solidarity party, and the loss of his seat as an MSP in the recent Scottish elections, where does Tommy go to be heard? Why, to the stage, of course - with his own daily chat show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August.
That's a pretty steep fall from grace for Sheridan, particularly when you consider last year's politico-celeb guests were Neil and Christine Hamilton. Yet it's also a move that's entirely in keeping with a well-spun tactic of the New Labour era, which every other party has adopted as the norm ever since Tony Blair successfully glad-handed with Noel Gallagher and other Britpop aristos at Downing Street. Get your most interesting or important candidate (hopefully they're the same person), stick them within a carefully controlled environment amidst the popular media, and hopefully they'll come across as louche, self-effacing, and effortlessly funny. Not like politicians at all, in other words.
So, since 1997, we've had William Hague at the Notting Hill Carnival, Boris Johnson gooning his way through Have I Got News for You, Ken Livingstone appearing on the front of NME, and George Galloway's tortuous turn on Big Brother. Oh, and of course, Blair himself asking "am I bovvered?" of Catherine Tate on Comic Relief, which is as fitting an epitaph to his rule as any.
It wasn't like this in Churchill or Thatcher's day, of course, back when certain laws of ministerial dignity still applied (the exception that proved the rule was Neil Kinnock appearing in a Tracey Ullman video). Yet does the new all-singing, all-dancing Westminster actually endear anyone to those involved?
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