It is impossible not to worry about Tony Blair. The over-rehearsed manner in which he took the stage at the Trimdon Labour Club must surely raise fears that he has a future as a television performer.

Wellwishers must discourage the Prime Minister from seeking fortune in a world familiar to his father-in-law, the Till Death Us Do Part star Tony Booth. Mr Blair is the first Prime Minister since Harold Wilson to retire of his own volition, and he would do well to avoid his predecessor’s flirtation with showbiz.

In common with almost everyone else familiar with the layout of 10 Downing Street, Harold Wilson’s first mission on leaving it in 1976 was to his publishers. A tome on government came out only seven months after he had left it.

From a sales perspective, such speed was commercially essential. So quickly did the once dominating figure of British politics recede from the public’s attention that by the time his memoir of his last term in office came out, in 1979, his expectation of a £100,000 advance for newspaper serialisation proved unrealistic. He had to settle for a little over £30,000.

He tried other avenues, presenting a surprisingly dull series on past prime ministers. His greater mistake, though, was when he tried to jazz up his performing career. He appeared on the 1978 Morecambe and Wise Christmas Special. Walking into Eric and Ernie’s “flat”, the former Prime Minister cracked lame jokes around the theme of his “pound in your pocket” catchphrase.

Some of those closest to him cringed at his descent into pantomime. Yet Wilson was a fan of the comedy duo. When Prime Minister, he had suggested they could help to bring peace to Northern Ireland by going there to sing Bring Me Sunshine. Those who thought the idea absurd clearly never imagined that the Rev Ian Paisley would find a calling in a gag-a-minute double act with Martin McGuinness.

In October 1978, Wilson made another error of judgment when he agreed to anchor a couple of episodes of the new BBC chat show Friday Night, Saturday Morning. Plonked in one of the naffest studio sets ever to grace 1970s television (cosy seats, artless glass and wicker coffee tables, absurdly large potted plant, laughably fake backdrop of the sea at sunset ), Wilson got to choose his own guests. Rather than interrogate world leaders, he chose Harry Secombe and Coronation Street’s Pat Phoenix.

He would have been better leaving this milieu to his fellow Yorkshireman Michael Parkinson. As he fluffed and floundered, the pauses while he tried to think up a further question become torturous. It being the BBC, there was not even the respite of an emergency commercial break. Let us only hope that Tony Blair — in retirement if not in politics — knows when to “exit stage left”.

Times Recommends

• It’s the beginning of the affair
• Afghanistan: still a price worth paying
• Heroes of the downtrodden