Drunks? Lock ’em up! Truants? Lock their parents up! Gangsters? The trials don’t work! Summary justice? Absolutely! You think I exaggerate but you were not there.

I suspect that Mr Blair is back on the caffeine, big-time. Plus, he revealed that he had had breakfast yesterday with a bunch of police officers. It seems, then, that he has been tipped over the edge yesterday by the combination of a double espresso and police wittering on about how everything would be wonderful if only they could put people in the Tower for dropping litter.

“This is what I have said to the police,” he said, cobalt-blue eyes flashing, “You tell me what you need in terms of antisocial behaviour, and I will deliver it for you.”

He was asked — gently, for we journalists recognise that this is a man with a history of heart trouble — if it was wise to give police too much power. “I don’t agree that the police would simply bang up anybody they wanted to bang up,” he insisted. Hmm. That may be the caffeine talking. And it got worse. He went from irritation to frustration to rent-a-rant and back again. He was on an angry loop. At some point he hit upon the subject of organised crime trials. “Heaven knows the millions of pounds they spend trying to put them together. You then have these trials going on forever. Half of them get off at the end of it. It is just ridiculous!”

Do you see what I mean? I felt that, if he had not had a press conference to go to, he would have been bombarding radio talk shows with his opinions. You don’t need to be a doctor to see that he needs to vent his frustration in healthier ways such as, say, boxercise. He didn’t seem to like the way he kept being questioned.

Someone needs to whisper in his ear: it’s not personal, Prime Minister, it’s the format. If only Michael Winner could stop in to say, soothingly: “Calm down, dear! It’s only a press conference!” Mr Blair probably would have bitten his head off.

I don’t think the Prime Minister knows what he sounds like which, eerily, is quite similar to some of those with lots of opinions on the Tory fringe at Blackpool last week. When asked about the proposal to lock up suspected terrrorists for 90 days without charge, Mr Blair’s eyes did not flash so much as strobe.

“I’m not saying that whatever the police say, we have got to do it,” he announced. This was confusing (see earlier statement) but only for a moment for he soon set things straight again. “If the police, charged with fighting terrorism in this country, say to me, ‘This is why we need it’ and that case is a good and compelling case then my duty is to do it! Unless someone can come forward with a very good argument why their case is unsound.”

But who would dare? Mr Blair needs to get back on the herbal tea and pronto.

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