Gordie played live at Knebworth yesterday.

He was following in some illustrious footsteps. It was here that Robbie Williams performed before a record 375,000 people. And it was here that Freddie Mercury gazed out over the crowds and declared: “This is an enormous place . . . it looks beautiful from up here!”

Gordon Brown’s leadership launch at Knebworth was a little quieter, involving 30 die-hard, mostly elderly fans eating cake and sipping coffee in a converted barn, but the Chancellor still got into the spirit of the place: “It’s magnificent to be here today . . . there’s no better place to launch my campaign,” he roared, as he leapt on the podium, and almost fell off.

True, no one screamed or fainted or hurled their underwear at the stage. But they did sing For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow quite enthusiastically, and presented him with a copy of The History of Stevenage. He seemed very pleased. “Amazing history, Stevenage,” he said.

After the rousing rendition of My Wayby Ol’ Red Eyes the day before, Brown’s deliberately undramatic performance was oddly refreshing. This was not so much rock anthem as a hymn recital in the major key.

“My father was a man of the Church, and he always told me that everyone has a talent, and everyone should have a chance to realise that talent.”

It was good thumping stuff even if, like most lyrics, it didn’t really seem to mean anything when you got home. “A new kind of politics with people right at the centre.” Right-ho. “We are going to build communities with the people in those communities.” Terrific. He also talked about educating 80 million children worldwide, ridding the world of disease, and conquering terrorism, which was nice.

Intriguingly, he told jokes at the expense of no less than two Republican presidents: the one about Reagan being told Olaf Palme was an “anticommunist” and replying “I don’t care what kind of communist he is”, and the one about Nixon going to newly-independent Ghana in 1957 and asking someone in the crowd how it felt to be free, and receiving the answer: “How would I know? I’m from Alabama.” You wouldn’t catch Blair dissing the titans of the Republican Party.

Barbara Follett, the Labour MP for Stevenage, performed backing vocals. “We fight together, we work together, and sometimes we cry together,” she crooned. Ms Follett used to be a Blair Babe, but now she is most emphatically a Gordon Gal. But hey, that’s rock ‘n’ roll: new lead singer, new act, new groupies.

What is more, Brown appears to have recruited an entirely new set of roadies, composed of 15-year-old boys in ill-fitting suits with enormous Windsor knots in their brand new ties.

I asked one of them when Brown was arriving and he actually blushed. Blair aides had the blushing gene removed as a condition of employment.

Where Blair genuinely loved to press the flesh, Brown just as evidently doesn’t. That, too, is strangely bracing. A baby was presented to the Chancellor at eye-level. His lips said: “Lovely, and how old is she?” But his eyes said: “If that child throws up on me, I’m toast.”

A charming elderly gent in a battered jumper was waiting on the steps outside as the Brown cortege arrived. “Hello,” said the Chancellor, thrusting out a paw, “Great to see you again,” and swept on.

“Never met him before, haven’t been invited, just thought I’d show up,” said the man, who turned out to be David Antony Fromanteel Lytton-Cobbold, 2nd Baron Cobbold, and owner of the vast Knebworth estate.

Brown will never be the sort of performer to have them weeping in the aisles; he will never, politically speaking, play the guitar with his teeth, or smash up the amplifiers, or develop the natural rhythm of his soon-to-be predecessor. Yet his very lack of slickness may be his best weapon. And when he claims to know the history of Stevenage he is probably, freakily, telling the truth.

For about 20 minutes, he chuntered through his playlist, reeling out economic statistics as if presenting the budget, and then clambered off stage to polite applause. It was a little while before anyone quite realised that Elvis had left the building.

It will take some time to get used to the new man on stage. But then, this was only the opening performance in what promises to be a very long tour.

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