Mid-morning, west London
So Tony Blair is to write his memoirs after all. The Guardian reports this morning that he has signed a contract with Random House to deliver within about two years, spurred on by the prospect of making up to £5m for his trouble. That sort of money may even recoup the loss he made when he sold his house in Islington - on security advice - and missed the London housing boom.
The book will be hard work, not least in the US market where respect for Blair remains high. Publishers are not sentimental. They want their money back. Yet when I interviewed close associates about his plans a while back for G2 some wondered if he would ever do it. Tony's a talker, not a writer, they warned. He would be happier on the lecture circuit.
But their predictions have been more right than wrong so far. I remember that Alastair Campbell, who also took his diaries to Random House, was sniffy at the last assumption that Blair would do a cosy deal with Rupert Murdoch - let alone join a News Corp board or other boards. Not his style, they predicted.
Others told me that he wanted to pursue his interest in the interface between faith and politics by becoming some sort of mediator in the Middle East, practising the lessons he learned in Belfast. People laughed at this claim, but it has turned out to be the case.
He represents the Quartet - the US, Russia, EU and UN - seeking to restore the battered Palestinian economy. Not quite the remit he might have wanted - the neo-con John Bolton mocked it in my hearing recently - but an operator can build on that. The Palestinian Authority tells reporters it knows he opens a lot of doors.
Scepticism is sensible, but so is an open mind. TB is down from having 200 staff at No 10 to six in St James's Square - behind Trafalgar Square - and, we learned this week, is about to move to Grosvenor Square, near what is now the high-security US embassy. These things cost money.
Blair's face on book covers is already shifting books despite the speed at which his domestic dominance seems long-past. Not just on Campbell's diaries, but on the Italian edition of Robert Harris's engrossing thriller, The Ghost.
Harris has always denied that Adam Lang, his ex-PM struggling to write his self-justificatory memoirs on the US resort of Martha's Vineyard is Blair - though the similarities of character and circumstance are striking. Mondadori, which is publishing the Italian translation as The Ghostwriter - there is no such word in Italian, my man on the Rialto says - are less inhibited.
Though the eyes and nose have been excised on the cover pic, I am told the rest of the head is clearly Blair's. Those who think Blair is a war criminal may say: "Serve him right." Those of us who don't think that can still enjoy it: he's always a good read, is Harris.
I can't explain why I was uneasy when I got to the last page without spoiling the plot. Suffice to say it is not hard to foresee circumstances in which publishers in most languages might want to pulp unsold copies. There again, they might just print lots more instead.
Meanwhile, the real TB has kept his mouth shut during GB's recent travails and told his entourage to do the same. What does he really think? My hunch would be that he think Brown was right not to stage an election, though by thinking tactically, not strategically - strategy is meant to be his strength - he messed up his autumn. But he can recover.
This week's "liberty test" speech is the first attempt to put all that behind him. But after starting in pole position against David Cameron, Brown now has some laps to catch up.
