My prize for the most hilarious quote of the week goes to Jamie Dimon, chief executive of the American bank, JP Morgan Chase. When asked why he was giving Tony Blair a million dollars he replied, “I went to see him and we hit it off.”

It is amazing how people hit it off when exchanging massive quantities of other people’s money. The bank later claimed that Blair offered it “a unique and invaluable global perspective”. Blair himself blustered that he would advise on “the huge political and economic changes that globalisation brings”, of which JP Morgan is as yet apparently unaware.

The truth is that Blair is being paid to have lunch. Cheek was always his strong suit. In May last year he furiously denied press reports that he would soon stand down early as MP “to make millions” from memoirs, speaking engagements and boardroom posts. A month later he stood down and negotiated a reported £5.8m for a book, some £500,000 for speeches and more from consultancies. This was in addition to a “pension” from the taxpayer of £64,000 a year, which most of us have to await our sixties to draw but a prime minister gets at once in the apparent belief that he cannot earn a normal salary.

In a nostalgic echo of his past life of spin, Blair protested through friends that “he could be doing much yuckier stuff”. In other words the nation should thank him for declining “to do anything tacky at the edges”.

Tacky is as tacky does. Blair has always been to money what Nicolas Sarkozy is to sex. Blairism was the politics of bling. One of its achievements was to render all consideration of taste, not least from uppity commentators, somehow otiose. Did Blair not remove Labour’s old stigma on money-making? Did he not render Britain a place in which hedge-fund managers and private equity sharks could hold up their heads and walk tax free? He turned the Roundhead maxim and claimed that “the greatest he that is in England hath a life to live as the poorest he”.

It is indeed absurd to criticise Blair for demeaning the dignity of his office by brazenly seeking cash within months of leaving it. He sought it when still in office and was let off the hook by the political community, largely because everyone’s nose was in the same trough. Besides, the life of a modern statesman is punishing. It would be odd to deny him the free-market value of being an ex-statesman simply for reasons of squeamishness.

Blair received advice on the propriety of all this from a body of great and good called the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments. This committee coughed and spluttered and told him that he could take the bank’s money, but “for one year after leaving office he should not be personally involved in lobbying government ministers or officials on behalf of his new employer”. Nor could he draw on “privileged information that was available to him as prime minister”. It was like a Chicago beat cop ordering Al Capone to stay clear of the mafia. If there is a dignity deficit in British politics it is in these ludicrous quangos that supposedly “uphold standards of public life”.

The interesting question is not whether Blair should be allowed to sting the market before losing his star appeal, it is what benefit he offers his new paymasters. He cannot tell JP Morgan anything it does not know, let alone anything that is worth a million dollars. The bank already spends a fortune on economists and other advisers. If I were a shareholder and thought for a minute that the bank was taking Blair’s advice on a foreign venture, I would head for the exit.

Nor is it conceivable that Blair’s memoirs will yield Random House a return on the money it has reportedly paid for them. Those who give him “between £500,000 and £1m a year” to address their assemblies cannot derive commensurate business value thereby. It is like company boards seeking members of the peerage to grace their letter-heads. Such a presence merely dusts a venture with a little glamour.

Blair’s predecessors, Sir John Major and Baroness Thatcher, commanded equally astronomical fees in the backwash of office. Likewise do lesser mortals such as television presenters, sportsmen, actors and even the occasional writer. They offer no wit or wisdom, but one thing alone, proximity to celebrity.

In this light I have no doubt that JP Morgan considers its million dollars – pocket-money to a banker - cash well spent if only to surprise its lunch guests. As Blair pontificates on Iraq or globalisation or “what my good friend George Bush told me the other day”, they will snigger behind their hands, but boast of it to family and friends for weeks afterwards.

Such celebrities on the payroll are an executive bauble, toys to enliven an otherwise grey day at the office. Like bonuses and tickets to Wimbledon, they are worth it as long as the chairman says so.

Behind this phenomenon lurks a more remarkable development, now going under the rubric of “live is live”. Last week the press published a list of top-selling live performances in 2007. It was dominated by reengineered rock stars and sportsmen. The highest average for an internet ticket was £7,425 for the Led Zeppelin revival, followed by the boxer Ricky Hatton, Wimbledon, the Rugby World Cup, Barbra Streisand and the Eagles. Othello at the Donmar came in at £899.

These performers put Blair and company in context. Show business is being stood on its head. Bands once went on tour to sell their albums. Now they give away their albums to sell their tours. Electronic recording and the internet are not profitable in themselves but a means to an end, that of making money from live performance.

This applies across every sphere of public activity. In 1992 Ross Perot, the American tycoon turned politician, declared that politics would in future be conducted via computer. He ran for office, disastrously, on that basis. Had he been right, American candidates would not now be stomping the frozen wastes and pressing the flesh in Iowa and New Hampshire. Politicians, preachers, musicians and sportsmen would operate from warm and private studios, relying on webcams and recordings to spread their message to the world. Authors would not go on book tours. The theatre would be dead.

Techno-fanatics claimed that electronic media would spell the end of live, driving everyone back into their drawing rooms and in front of their screens. They were wrong. The market for live music is rising by an astonishing 10% a year. The West End is thriving, tickets for top football matches cost a mortgage and even London’s dome is packed. You could buy Madonna’s entire recorded output for less than it costs to see her for two hours on stage. Meanwhile, 5,000 people in Los Angeles will pay up to $2,000 to dine and be photographed alone with Blair.

People appear to crave not screen-based entertainment but the opposite, propinquity to flesh-and-blood. They crave to see in person what they have seen only on the tube. They may use the new electronics to work markets, exchange information and keep in touch, but the value of the internet is in guiding them to congregate in affinity groups and form new relationships. Human beings, above all, seek an encounter with other human beings.

If the human being is a celebrity, so much the better. That is why Blair is worth a million dollars to the directors of JP Morgan. He is a draw to those who want a flash of the exotic in their lives. He is a public icon in the bank boardroom, as Radiohead are at Glastonbury or Jonny Wilkinson is at Twickenham or JK Rowling is at Waterstone’s.

As the new cult of political concerts shows, the public responds to any excuse for congregation. In the Middle Ages Chaucer understood that “folk long to go on pilgrimages” to escape the humdrum of their lives. They still do. The internet has facilitated such congregation. It has not driven people into themselves but the opposite, into seeking ever more frenetic human contact.

Blair’s millions reflect this phenomenon. On screen he is just another picture, available free. Live he is real. And today live comes expensive.

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