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Christian Brassington as Channel 4's Tony Blair Rock Star
Christian Brassington as a young Tony Blair. Photograph: Dave Bently/Channel 4
Christian Brassington as a young Tony Blair. Photograph: Dave Bently/Channel 4

'Tony Blair absolutely modelled himself on Mick Jagger'

This article is more than 18 years old
TV producer Victoria Powell explains how she recreated the PM's adventures in 1970s rock

December 2004. An article in a Surrey newspaper claims that, aged 18, Tony Blair ran a rock promotions company organising gigs for teenagers at a Richmond church hall. A photograph accompanies the piece: there he stands, our prime minister, posing in tie-dyed T-shirt, midriff exposed, long hair, flares and bare feet. It's a daft look, but it's him all right. No question about it.

When you're a TV producer, you're always on the look-out for original ideas for drama documentaries and my instincts tell me this could be a great story. Initial research reveals Blair was a bit of a teenage tearaway. After a final school term involving near-expulsion and a bloody good caning, the future PM took a year off (1971-72) between public school and Oxford University, travelling to London with dreams of rock stardom. He worked relentlessly towards his goal, which culminated three years later with his debut as lead singer of student band Ugly Rumours. I wonder what might have happened if things had gone differently - would Blair be running 19 Management instead of the country?

Blair went to Fettes, a public school known as the "Eton of Scotland". It's a stiff, establishment kind of place that still allowed "fagging" in Blair's day. Donald Noble was a fellow occupant of Blair's boarding house. Noble knew Blair well and remembers him as having little respect for authority. "Blair's tendency was to bend the rules, but rarely break them," he says. "Instead, he enjoyed the game of infuriating the masters and escaping punishment." He recalls one of Blair's tactics: "The school had a rule that you had to get your hair cut four times a term. He didn't like this, as the fashion at the time was for long hair. So Tony very cleverly went in on the first four days of the summer term and had four haircuts. Tick, tick, tick, tick. So that meant when anybody said to him, 'You should have a haircut', he said, 'I've already had them, sir.'"

Fellow pupil Hugh Kellett has similar memories. "He did have this disarming ability to never look crestfallen, so he would never look as if he'd been defeated. And he became ... a sort of slightly aged Artful Dodger - getting through, getting by, getting out of pretty well all situations. Teflon Tony was definitely well in evidence as a schoolboy."

Many remember Blair as an excellent actor. His English tutor David MacMurray says: "He could inhabit a part and showed great command of the audience. I think that, to a degree, he's never lost that talent or never failed to use it. The time when I was most forcibly reminded of Tony Blair's acting talents and his delivery was when he read a lesson at Princess Diana's funeral. It was extremely mannered - like a performance by an old actor who lost his real passion for acting but could still remember his techniques." I ask MacMurray what he thinks Blair enjoyed about acting: "The applause, I think."

Blair's rock star persona was already emerging at school: "Blair as we knew him absolutely modelled himself on Mick Jagger," says Kellett. "I think we felt he copied Mick Jagger so brilliantly that he became Mick Jagger. His whole appearance, demeanour and desire suggested he wanted to be a rock star."

The future PM left Fettes with two As and a C in his A-levels, and secured a place at St John's College, Oxford, to read law. But first of all, he decided to take that gap year to pursue his rock music ambitions. Alan Collenette was Blair's business partner in the music business venture Blair-Collenette Promotions, which promoted bands and organised gigs in 1971 and 1972. After his music career with Blair, Collenette moved into real estate in California and now lives in Marin County.

Collenette agrees to meet me. As a longtime friend of Blair, it's not surprising he has a few questions for me, but for the first hour he's not willing to answer a single one of mine. Then gradually he opens up. He remembers how Blair arrived in London knowing nobody, and landed on his doorstep out of the blue. "This boy with a grin and a battered old suitcase rang our doorbell. Blair told me he was a great guitarist who'd come down to London and was looking for someone to play gigs with. And so I explained to him I was quite an up-and-coming rock promoter. Of course neither was entirely true."

From this chance meeting the pair became fast friends. Collenette says: "I instantly liked him ... There was a sense with him that everything was possible." Blair wanted to play the guitar in a rock band and soon introduced Collenette to the homemade blue guitar he called "Clarence". Collenette recalls: "It turned out he knew two chords. So he was sitting there strumming Clarence and then the whole neck fell off the guitar with a loud twang. The thing collapsed in a heap on the floor. I think we both realised that we'd be better off managing bands."

So the pair asked a local band called Jaded to play a series of gigs that attracted mainly schoolchildren. Tickets were 20p. As the year progressed, they became more ambitious, booking larger and larger venues, with mixed success. I am interested to find out more about Blair's instincts for management at 18, so I decide to get the band back together to chat over old times. I book a recording studio in London so we can talk and record the music Blair was promoting all those years ago.

The big day arrives and the band are delighted to be together again. In all, we lay down 13 original tracks. Later, at the pub, we talk about the old days. The band remain fond of Blair, some more than others. They remember a boy with an "ingratiating grin", keen to be "part of the scene". It's clear they didn't accept him as a manager. Collenette recalls: "One of them was constantly saying, you know, 'Roadie, go and get me a hamburger.' Tony didn't like being called a roadie, but if it meant a gig happening on time, we'd get the burger."

The band members remain amused by Blair's success. Theo Sloot, Jaded's drummer, has a theory: "He's a sponge. With us he just sat quietly, watched and learned. He has the ability to learn from every situation. And he goes on. If he fails he just gets up and does it again differently next time."

So can it be true that determination is the key to Blair's success? If so, what happened to the musical career? I ask Kellett, who was with Blair at Fettes and then Oxford. He remembers 1973 as a time of great political activity at Oxford; students were constantly staging sit-ins and protests, "but the amazing thing about Blair was that he didn't do any of that. He never got on the soapbox or joined the Union. He was absolutely the last person you'd think of to become the PM. He had the reverse attitude - nihilistic, cynical and sarcastic. All he had was the persona and the ambition to be a rock star."

So what went wrong? As a student, Blair got his chance to take centre stage in Ugly Rumours. Wasn't this the moment he'd been waiting for? Fellow Oxford student and Tory MP Alistair Burt recalls watching Blair on stage. "This was a man who was clearly enjoying himself a great deal, but we were under no illusion that this was the next great talent."

Blair only ever played six gigs with Ugly Rumours, but Collenette believes Blair could have succeeded. "If 75% of being a rock star is looks and personality and charisma - which is that elusive beast that we all wish we had but half of 1% do - you know, Tony had it. And the other 25% is some talent he could have faked."

No one I spoke to thought he had the potential to become a clever politician, let alone PM. Noble admits he is "still surprised that that's where he ended up, but if you're going to play on a world stage you might as well do it from that position." Collenette says: "If you'd have told me all those years ago that Tony would go on to be prime minister, I would have laughed so hard - and so would he."

Almost nobody disliked teenage Tony, but did any of them ever really know him? According to MacMurray, "He is more difficult to define and to feel you understand than any other person I've ever met. He reminds me frequently of a statement made by EM Forster about Joseph Conrad's novels: that inside the secret casket of Conrad's genius there lies not a jewel but a vapour. Tony Blair is like a vapour, you can't pin him down, put him on a piece of green baize and look at him and say, 'That is Tony Blair.'"

· Tony Blair Rock Star is on Channel 4 at 10pm on January 19

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