Blair, who kept his hair long and attempted a Jaggeresque pout in his schooldays at Fettes in Edinburgh, remained fixated with the singer when he got to Oxford. He modelled his role as lead singer in a rock band closely on the star.

The revelations cast a new light on Blair’s decision, after he became prime minister, to recommend the rock star for a knighthood. Jagger accepted the honour in June last year although he will not be dubbed until this October.

Blair’s Rolling Stones-obsessed youth emerges in a Radio 5 Live documentary about the prime minister to be broadcast next Sunday in advance of his 50th birthday on May 6.

Nick Ryden and Hugh Kellett, two of his closest schoolfriends at Fettes, known as the “Eton of Scotland”, tell how Blair was completely under the spell of Jagger. “He absolutely based himself on Jagger in the early 1970s. His hair was like Jagger’s. So was his mouth. He even pouted and grinned like Jagger.”

They say Blair was “Artful Dodger-like” at what was a strict school. “Always slightly on the wrong side of the law. His hair was very long, just like Mick’s. But he got away with it because on hair inspection day, a Friday, he would always grease it down. Yet by Saturday it was like Jagger’s again.”

After leaving Fettes, Blair took a year off before Oxford. He spent much of the time in London with a friend called Alan Collenette when both became talent scouts for pop groups. “When Tony came to stay with me he brought this blue guitar which he called Clarence,” says Collenette. “He just had this one tacky suitcase with two changes of clothes inside.”

At St John’s College, Oxford, Blair formed the group the Ugly Rumours. “He had long hair, a tiny T-shirt which revealed a rippling bare torso, and wore purple loons and cuban heels,” says Mark Ellen, a fellow group member. “He looked like a more serious Mick Jagger.”

Perhaps surprisingly, Blair did not select any Stones records when he was on Desert Island Discs in 1996. Instead, his choice included the Beatles’ In My Life and Bruce Springsteen’s Fourth of July. His spin doctors may have advised against a choice of the rebellious Stones or he may have cringed at recalling the embarrassment of his teenage years.

It is not recorded in the new programme whether Blair and Jagger have met, although Blair did want him to perform at the Queen’s golden jubilee concert last year. Jagger was away.

Clues to Blair’s chameleon-like future political persona also emerge. He was a skilled actor and a charmer, friends say in the documentary. Kellett also speaks of his “enormous smile”. “He has run his life with this smile. It has helped him get out of trouble.”

On the same Radio 5 Live programme, Neil Kinnock, the leader of the Labour party from 1983 to 1992, says the Granita pact, one of the most famous legends behind the birth of new Labour, is a myth.

In a dinner at the Granita restaurant in Islington, north London, after the death of Blair’s predecessor John Smith in 1994, Blair is said to have agreed with Gordon Brown that he would hand over the leadership to him at a later date in return for his support. “This is pure political science fiction,” says Kinnock.

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