Intense as the writing and filming of Bremner, Bird and Fortune is, by and large it doesn't intrude on my sleep. Until now. Having filmed a closing musical number featuring Ming Campbell as the chart-topping madman Chico (don't ask), I awoke on Monday from a dream which had me attending the Lib Dem leader's wedding (what?) dressed only in a singlet and running shorts. It was all taking place around the Edinburgh City Chambers, a location my brain had stored from Robin Cook's funeral reception. I remember a growing horror in the dream as it dawned on me that I may have misread the dress code. This was only partly soothed by the sight of another wedding guest wearing a shirt and tie above the waist - and running shorts below. It gets worse. As I took my seat, who should sit next to me but Tessa Jowell, looking about 20 years younger and strangely attractive. I remember asking if the initials of her department - DCMS - stood for the Department for Cosmetics, Make-up and S . . . At that moment, even as I was searching for the third word (Slap?), my alarm went off. What can this mean?
Usually I can't remember my dreams. They tend to disappear in the act of trying to recall them. I think of that extraordinary scene in Fellini's Roma when the frescoes in the Roman catacombs evaporate before your eyes as they are exposed to the light and air of the city. There may well be other dreams, for all I know involving Margaret Beckett, Mardi Gras and a selection of root vegetables, but they are lost for ever. Meanwhile I compensate for any lack of deep sleep by dozing off in the make-up chair while Helen, my long-suffering make-up artist, transforms me into another character. Often I fall asleep as one person and wake up as another altogether - a trait I share with a number of real-life politicians.
Fortunately my skin rarely reacts to the quantities of chemicals, solvents and glue that are required to transform me into the likes of Prince Charles (how does he manage it every morning?). The worst experience I had was a few years ago, when I finished a Princess Diana sketch from her Queen of Hearts days which required her to weep while watching open-heart surgery. For this she required an onion. My next character was Boris Yeltsin, which required heavy make-up, eye-bags above and below my eyes, and - and here's the rub - dark contact lenses. I foolishly did not wash my hands after the onion scene, with the result that when placing the contact lenses on my eyeballs, I was, in effect, placing a slice of raw onion on to each one. Jarvis Cocker must know the feeling: I remember reading that he was looking for somewhere to store his lenses and used the tops of a couple of spice jars. Duh. He won't do that again. Even as the tears rolled down my cheeks and my eyes turned red, my director, Steve, was sympathetic ("Well if you're going to look like that for anyone, it might as well be Boris Yeltsin").
I've lamented in these columns the disappearance of reliably funny characters - Howard, Kennedy, Cook, Blunkett - and the preponderance of crushingly dull ones. (They know who they are. Indeed, they're so dull that possibly only they know who they are.) Blair's dull, too. Having impersonated him, consciously or unconsciously, for 12 years now, ennui sets in. And what more is there to say? We've reached the stage where I'm beginning to wonder, what is the point of Tony Blair? I sometimes think that it is no longer satirical to ridicule the Prime Minister, partly because he can do that pretty well himself, but also because everyone else is doing it: another of those examples of when counter-culture becomes mainstream. At such moments I often wonder if the really satirical thing to do would be to offer the PM my wholehearted support, praise him fulsomely and ridicule his opponents, if only for the challenge. The public would also know I didn't really mean it. But then it occurs to me: that's what Gordon Brown's been doing for years.
While researching a piece on the imploding Republican White House, I idly entered the words "George Bush corruption" into Google. It came back with 8.74 million results. I then narrowed the search to "George W Bush corruption". The number of results shot up to 12.4 million.
