Forgive me if you've heard this story, but as the Met continues its investigations into the link between Tony Blair's tennis partners and the awarding of peerages, I must declare an interest.

I had my day in court, or more accurately on court, in the south of France in 1996. A local in a bar had told me that "the leader of your socialist party is coming next week" (the word socialist gives you an idea how long ago it was). I checked with my office and a few days later - I still don't know how it came about - the phone rang and a voice said, "It's Cherie here. Would you like to play tennis with Tony?"

My mind flashed along the lines of a Tory poster ("New Laver: New Danger"), but the opportunity was too good to resist. He arrived in a people carrier with the family, including his mother-in-law ("my earth-wire"). The court was taken, but Tony had an idea. "I know - let's go to Dave's place," he said, and minutes later we were playing at the home of Dave Stewart of Eurythmics, a villa overlooking Cannes where Dave, who suffers from Paradise Syndrome, would pass the time worrying that his life was too perfect. At a barbecue later, Blair said how the family enjoyed my impression of John Major. I pointed out that the boot would be on the other foot when he became PM. His response was instant. "How does Lord Bremner sound?"

Yes, I know he was joking, but the joke's a lot funnier now. Bearing in mind what happened to other tennis partners, I should consider myself lucky I got away without an invoice from Lord Levy.

Talking of whom, Labour's fundraiser-in-chief was absent last weekend from a party I was booked for at the Natural History Museum. I imagine it was because the last time he went there, they thought he'd escaped from the reptile section. More likely he was busy fending off the attentions of Deputy Assistant Commissioner Hayes and attending to his own work as Blair's special envoy to the Middle East, which seems so much more peaceful these days.

Having name-dropped and mentioned tennis, I feel duty-bound to make amends by repeating a story John Fortune tells about Larry Adler, the mouth organist, tennis player and celebrated name-dropper. An acquaintance once invited Adler to lunch, and told him on arrival that he'd taken the liberty of choosing the menu in advance. First course was corn-on-the-cob, followed by spare ribs, with melon for dessert. I don't know if Adler clicked that the exercise was planned so that his companion would have the secret pleasure of watching him having to hold each course to his mouth and chomp as if playing the harmonica.

I've spent much of this week in Spain, where the Costa del Sol continues to disappear under an avalanche of construction. "You are in Macanthony territory" shouts a pinstriped businessman (Macanthony?) from billboards.

Everything is English; bars, fish and chips, timeshares. I wonder if the Spanish feel the Brits should assimilate their culture the way Muslims are told to assimilate ours. And is asking "good" British Muslims to take responsibility for their extremist brethren like asking the British on the Costa to speak up against the fraudsters in their midst? It's a thought.

I read of the Geordie woman who awoke from a coma to find that she now speaks with a Jamaican accent. Apparently it's a phenomenon known as "foreign accent syndrome", where the part of the brain that controls speech is affected, forcing the victim to speak in an unaccountably strange way. Listening to Gordon Brown's pronouncements on renewing our nuclear deterrent, extending powers of detention and the like, I'm beginning to wonder if the Chancellor is emerging from a semi-endogenous coma only to find himself speaking like Tony Blair. Unless he means it, which is too alarming to contemplate.

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