ON THE first morning of the first day of her visit to Blackburn, Condoleezza Rice was asked if she now understood about “4,000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire”. The US Secretary of State had, after all, professed herself a Beatles fan and was on record as saying that she had always been intrigued by those lyrics.

But the question met with blank incomprehension. “Four, thousand, holes . . . ?”

Jack Straw, Dr Rice’s gallant consort, leapt to her aid. “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts’ Club Band . . . there used to be a lot of holes in the road . . . a man went around with a clipboard . . . ”

Condi’s bafflement seemed to deepen with every word.

Straw ploughed on: “ . . . the Beatles used it in the song.”

The clouds cleared. “Oh yes, yes, yes. Yes.” A sticky diplomatic-cultural moment had been avoided but the incident was emblematic of an awkward day with a slightly odd couple.

This was the classic return date. Mr Straw had invited his American counterpart to his home constituency after visiting her home in Birmingham, Alabama, last year. He was bringing the object of his affections to meet the folks back home. He wanted to show the most powerful woman in the world his football team, show her a good time. He would give her Lancashire hotpot in return for her barbecue ribs. He wanted her to love the North West.

And yet, as so often on the tense and hopeful second date, things kept going slightly awry. As diplomacy, the event was distinctly strange; as theatre, it was superb. Protesters gathered, wires were crossed, the mosque that had been going to host the happy couple rescinded the invitation. All day Mr Straw hovered at Dr Rice’s elbow like a proud but anxious new boyfriend.

In a strange choice of venue, their first stop, on a visit overshadowed by protests over Iraq, was . . . an arms factory. In the BAE Systems plant outside Blackburn that manufactures parts for the F35 fighter jet, Mr Straw and Dr Rice stood surrounded by bits of high-tech weaponry, a backdrop that might have been calculated to goad the protesters. Posters celebrated the “Joint Strike Force” which, we learnt, was intended to “produce lateral war fighting capability” (start wars), “make a global sustainable solution” (win wars) and then “improve horizontal and vertical integration” (pull out).

Dr Rice towered over Mr Straw in golden shoes with 4in heels. Was she concerned about the protests? “I have no problem with people demonstrating. I’ve seen it in every city I’ve visited,” she said.

Mr Straw gazed at her with shining eyes (behind contact lenses; the glasses have gone). He held her arm; she called him Jack, repeatedly.

The next stop was Pleckgate School, where more than 100 protesters were waiting. “Condi Rice, Condi Rice, How many kids did you kill today?” they chanted. Dr Rice didn’t turn a hair. Dr Rice, in fact, cannot turn a hair because her hair is sprayed into place; she is tireless but her hair is completely and utterly lacquered.

She chatted amiably, deflecting questions about whether she had plans to run for the presidency. “Thank you but I don’t. When I’m done I’d like to go back to teaching,” she said, not quite convincingly. But Mr Straw had more outdoor entertainment in mind as he whisked his guest to the Blackburn Rovers ground. He gave her tokens of his feelings: a football shirt, a football, a pair of goalie gloves and a lecture on the glories of his team. One of the American journalists, soggy with jetlag, whispered: “Why are we coming to an empty stadium to be given a T-shirt?” It is impossible to imagine the elegant Dr Rice wearing a nylon football shirt but she nodded throughout, pretending to care about Blackburn Rovers. She may deny presidential ambition but she has the vital presidential knack of turning on her personal charm in a moment: Insta-Rice.

If you read the news today, oh boy, there were 4,000 cops in Blackburn, Lancashire. The town has not had such a high-profile foreign visitor since Mahatma Gandhi in 1931, and the security was intense. Police lined every road; more than a dozen heavies bustled Dr Rice from one event to the next; nine police snipers gazed down from the roof of Ewood Park.

In her Chatham House lecture Dr Rice drew a parallel between the regeneration of her home town and economic recovery in the North West. “In the tale of two cities, Birmingham and Blackburn, we have seen how the impossible dreams of yesterday have become the realities of today.” But the steel was there behind the blossom. Questioned about Iraq, her voice slipped from the major to the sharper, minor key. “What was the alternative? . . . Saddam Hussein wasn’t going anywhere without military intervention.”

Then we were off once more, bouncing over the holes in Blackburn, Lancashire, to the Paul McCartney Auditorium at the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts. The day’s events were less about diplomacy than mood music: an elaborate tango between two mutually admiring secretaries of state, the gospel tones of the Deep South in harmony with the Mersey Beat. And if the music occasionally slipped a little off-key in this peculiar Day in the Life of two diplomats, it was still a heartfelt and memorable duet.

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