PRESIDENT BUSH is renowned for his mixture of mangled syntax and bluntness, but standing in black tie before 2,600 journalists and celebrities in Washington on Saturday night, he outdid himself.

“Some of my critics in the international community call me arrogant. I will not even honour that with a response. Screw them!” Then, amid growing suspicions that he might have fallen off the wagon after nearly 20 years of abstinence, when his wife, Laura, was introduced, he quipped throatily: “She’s hot!” This was not the unravelling of a wartime President with anaemic poll numbers, but a genuinely funny self-parody routine courtesy of Steve Bridges, a presidential impersonator, who stood next to Mr Bush while the pair delivered a comedy routine at the annual dinner of the White House Correspondents’ Association.

Continuing a venerable tradition of US presidents who attend the function and lampoon themselves, Mr Bush played the straight man, while his impersonator, with all the tics and mannerisms of the real Commander-in-Chief, said what the President was probably thinking.

“Let’s get things going,” Mr Bridges opened, alongside Mr Bush, who hates late nights nearly as much as he dislikes the press, “or I’ll never get to bed.” He added: “The media really ticks me off, the way they try to embarrass me by not editing what I say.”

Mr Bridges, invited by Mr Bush to mimic him at the dinner, looked at the President and said: “All right. Maintain. Be cool. Let’s give this a try: ‘We must enhance non-compliance protocols sanctioned not only at IAEA formal sessions, but through intercessional contact’.”

Trying to repeat, Mr Bush said: “We must enhance non-compliance protocols sanctioned not only at E-I-E-I-O sessions, but through intersexual conduct.” The audience howled with laughter.

Referring to the President’s dismal approval ratings, Mr Bridges said: “How come I can’t have dinner with the 36 per cent of people who like me?” And Mr Bush, looking back on a recent turnover of staff, said: “Ladies and gentlemen, I feel chipper tonight — I survived the White House shake-up.”

The real Mr Bush also talked of “continuing to spread our agenda around the world, and even internationally”, while his lookalike, in a reference to Vice-President Cheney’s shooting accident in February, said: “Where is the great white hunter? He shot the only trial lawyer in the country who likes me.”

Although the Bush double act was a huge hit, perhaps the biggest event of the evening was the emergence from the shadows of Valerie Plame, the former CIA officer at the heart of the leak scandal that led last year to the indictment of Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Mr Cheney’s former chief of staff.

Ms Plame, looking strikingly glamorous, was surrounded by photographers all night. The publication of her name in 2003 triggered an investigation by a special prosecutor. He was given the task of discovering whether the Bush White House had deliberately leaked her name to damage her husband, a critic of the Iraq war.

Three tables away from Ms Plame sat Karl Rove, Mr Bush’s chief political adviser. Last week he appeared before a grand jury for the fifth time in the leak investigation, amid speculation that he might be charged in connection with the affair.

Mr Rove and Ms Plame did not speak to each other on Saturday night, but around them — as ever in Washington — the gossip and intrigue swirled.

PRESIDENTIAL PUNCHLINES

At one of the dinners President Kennedy tackled allegations that Joseph Kennedy had bought him the 1960 election by bribing officials. The young President pulled out a fake telegram, supposedly from the old man, reading: “Jack, don’t spend one dollar more than is necessary. I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for a landslide”

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