Andrew Marr, one of the BBC’s star interviewers, faced his biggest challenge tonight, when given a full hour of peak television time on BBC2, to interview former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, on the day of the publication of his book, which is published at a critical time in British politics, when the Labour Party is in the middle of an election for a new leader.

The result, if I report this as a television critic, was a draw.

Marr confronted Blair with all the difficult questions. How could he jusitfy his alliance with George W Bush to oust Sadam Hussein, when there was no proof of weapons of mass destruction? What was the truth of his alliance with Gordon Brown, who had agreed to support Blair in his bid for the Labour Party leadership in the early 1990′s?

Blair, both feet planted wide apart, took everything thrown against him, with modest charm. Yes, he had made mistakes. But he was acting honestly for what was the only sensible option, for a modern prime minister, operating under the media spotlight.

Of course, you could not have full freedom of information. Otherwise, no member of cabinet would speak their mind, if their dissent was going to be published. He had to make choices when he was in power.

And he operated on what he thought was right at the time.

The Blair book is about his years in power. But the media hype is about the now. Who is Blair supporting in the current leadership battle. Of course, the great communicatior refused to say. Though, in an aside, he did say that he was fond of Diane Abott, the only contestant, who has herself said, she has no chance of winning.

All of the Westminster press corps, has been saying that Blair favours David Miliband, whose policies are pretty much in line with the New Labour, which won Blair power in 1997, after Labour’s many years in the wilderness.

Blair refused to confirm this tonight to Marr.

Marr failed to penetrate his defences.

He failed at a vital moment to ask the right follow up question.

Marr pushed him hard about whether he was a conservative in Labour clothing. How the rated himself compared with other long-lived British ?prime ministers, Clement Attlee and Margaret Thatcher.

Predictably, Blair did not answer this one.

He said he was a progressive!!!

And he went on to trumpet again, that he was devoting all the profits of the book to the British Legion.

That is when Marr fouled up, what was otherwise a fine interview.

He let it go by.

No real Labour person, would choose as their faviourd charity, the British Legion.

The British Legion is not ‘political’. It is for British servicemen and women.

But it is a right wing charity. In favour of the status quo. It is middle England.

It is not the Rowntree Foundation. Or Green Peace.

This simple donation is the final proof, that Blair was, what Marr felt in his gut, a conservative in Labour clothing.

Back in UK after our French holiday and greeted by an orgy of media comment on the first 100 days of the Cameron/Clegg coalition. I did not learn anything significant from it that l did not already know. Not because my colleagues in the mainstream press were not doing their job properly.

On the contrary. They had talked to the movers and shakers in the coalition and contestants for the Labour Party leadership. And reported what they said. They had done their vox pops of ordinary folk, and reported what they said.

All very professional.

But what they did not do, was to attempt to explain why the British electorate at the polling booths refused to be bullied by Gordon Brown, or, more politely by David Cameron.

They voted for a hung parliament. Which both Brown and Cameron said would be a disaster, which would destroy international confidence.

They were wrong.

The pound has not plunged in the currency markets. Obama, the EC and other world leaders are talking to our new government. Which is not seen as being the prisoner of a far right minority in Europe.

The British electorate also rejected, what the media call Cleggomania. They did not rush to vote LibDem, despite their distrust of Labour and the Connservatives.

The mainstream media worry about this.

Perhaps it means that British voters think all politicians are corrupt.

But maybe, just maybe, the British voterrs realise that we live in a very complex world. And that no party can miraculously solve all the problems.

Perhaps the British voters, most of whom have not had a university education, are quite able to think such things out for themselves.

Thanks to an email from a scientist friend, I have been alerted to the news that BBC Radio Four is to put the Qwerty keyboard on trial on Wednesday morning at 9 AM. The flier tells me:

All rise for Judge Stephen Fry, in whose court the Qwerty keyboard stands trial.

The Qwerty keyboard was invented in the 1870′s by Christopher Scholes, because of the need to slow typists down. Because the mechanical typewriters of the time caused fast typists to stop, when the adjacent keys got stuck. Qwery continued to dominate, although the problem of the sticking keys was solved and the invention of the electric typewriter in the 1930′s removed it entirely.

Nevertheless the English speaking world continued to use Qwerty, although a much better keyboard layout had been invented by an American management scientist, August Dvorak, in the early 1930′s. You can read this history in five minutes on my other web site: www.typingbytouch.com.

Tomorrow I am on the road from Toulouse to La Rochelle, so I am not even sure whether I will be able to catch the BBC radio programme. And I don’t know whether I will agree with Fry’s verdict.

But I am sure that the issue is in the public interest, although the series is entitled ‘Fry’s English Delights’, which suggests it is dumbing down unworthy of the taxpayer’s money.

In the computer age there is no problem with sticking keys.

But Qwerty rules.

And so does two finger typing, which is used also on mobile phones.

But on the Ipad, you can touch type.

And it does not take scientific research to prove, that if we use eight fingers, we are likely to do better, than if we use two.

So learning touch typing is sensible. But learning Qwerty takes three times as long as learning Dvorak.

Will Fry’s programme delight us with this knowledge.

We will find out on the night.

Well, that’s how it seems to me. Ax-les-Therms is roughly the same height as Snowdon, the highest mountain in Wales, which is where I spent my first holidays in my boyhood. The house of our friends overlooks the town, standing by the side of the railway line into Andorra. My grandson had the same feeling. It is a spectacular place to play ‘I’m the king of the castle’.

This picture is a week old, because I had no wi-fi in Ax. Now able to catch up from this house in Toulouse, where I have been strolling by the river and enjoying not being in a French hospital. The weather has changed. The sun is no longer beating down. A cool breeze is blowing through the house this afternoon and any minute now we shall have some rain. But it would take more than rain to dampen the spirits of a reprieved man.

I may even do another blog today.

The French doctors now have the result of the last of their batttery of tests. The biopsy was clear and they have found nothing else serious so I do not have to return to the hospital at Foix. Instead I have spent my last day on the farm at Paillac taking snaps of the donkeys and the flies.

Dawn in the French Pyranees. I am trapped in a high-tech French hospital in Foix, the last major town on the road to Andorra, which is one of the smallest countries on the planet. So small that it’s economy is dependant on its neigbours, and it is ruled by joint Presidents, whoever is President of France and an archbishop. Since this is the height of the French summer holiday the road is filled by a constant stream of traffic starting the long climb to the highest mountains, spurred on by the prospect of buying tax-free goods. But at 6.30 AM the silence is deafening. Outside. And in the hospital. The night staff are winding down ready to pass over to the day staff. I have pressed the red button hanging above my head. But no-one has yet come.

I am trapped. On my right side my arm is attached to a glucose drip. On the left another drip is connected to my cock, washing out my bladder and depositing the contents via a catheter exiting to a bag hanging on the bed rail. I am not in any pain. But now I am awake I want to see the sky. The button which raises the shutters is tantalisingly just beyond my reach, so I need some other human being to enable me to greet another day. And prepare myself for whatever I have to face. Which might be totally trivial or something quite serious.

For more than twenty years I have been resisting my wife’s totally sensible request that I make my will, because I have had a totally irrational feeling, that if I make my will, him up there will decide that it means I am ready to go, so he will press the termination button. A silly superstition for anyone, and particularly for me, who believes that it is probable that him up there is a myth.

A few days ago I finally grew up and acted like a mature human being. Rang my lawyer and asked him to draw up a will before my holiday in France starting on 26 July. He pulled out all the stops, and I was able to print out my last will and testament two days before I was due to catch the St Malo ferry. But I still prevaricated over getting it signed and witnessed. Instead stuffed it in my computer case. It stayed there on Monday 26 July by which time I was sitting on the side of estuary at St Suliac, a village a few miles from St Malo, enjoying the sunset (see my daughter’s picture). The following evening I was watching an even more impressive sunset at our first holiday destination, a house at Ax-les-Therms, which overlooks the railway to Andorra, less than 50 miles from the border.

I did not think about the will again, until dawn last Wednesday, which now seems an age away. After my first pee of tthe day I found blood in the toilet bowl. I did not tell anyone. But the next time I felt the call out came a steady bright red stream which looked to me at least 90 per cent blood. I lagged behind while most of the house went out for a walk, thinking over the implications. Shortly before lunch-time, following another red stream, I marched to the sitting room determined to get my will witnessed by whoever was there.

Robert, who is Chinese/American and Magali, who is French, were abviously a bit puzzled, when I put the will on the table, and gave my explanation as to why I wanted it done now, after putting it off for years. But they signed on the dotted line. And then I decided to tell them I was worried and why. Robert was very practical, running through the possibilities, starting with kidney damage (which we both knew might mean I had less than 24 hours to live). But he insisted that I should see a doctor, like, now.  Happily, we found one in Ax who saw us an hour later, and sent us on to the hospital in Foix with a covering letter.

Though it was the early evening when I arrived I was examined within an hour by a doctor. He got so frustrated with my attempts to explain my medical history in French that he fetched a colleague, who just happened to be English (first degree, Oxford, higher degree Sheffield, where he practised for several years before moving to France). He explained that under the French medical system they insisted on a whole battery of tests, many of a kind that were done in England in out-patients. He decided I should stay overnight and that they would do the tests next day.

Byyesterday afternoon, blood tests, x-rays and scans had established the cause of the bleeding was probably in the bladder. This was confirmed by the final test, a camera probe via the penis. However, the urologist could not see anything clearly on his screen, because there was so much blood around. They are going to do it again today after they have washed out my bladder.

This blog was written in my head a week ago, but situation remains essentially the same today. They discovered that my bladder was ulcerated, but they still do not know whether this was caused by something trivial or by a malignant growth. I have to wait til Friday at the earliest to know the result of the biopsy. I was released from hospital last Wednesday evening, after my urine flow had changed from the colour of a decent claret, to rose, and finally to slightly yellow water.

So I have been enjoying my holiday. Well, sort of. Off the booze, because of the anti-biotics. Cutting down on the fags in case I have to go back to hospital conditions and because it will help to delay the progress of my chronic pulmonary disease. Waiting to hear whether I have something even nastier that will keep me away from blogging.  At low moments fearing that I will die in a French hospital, will never see the view of Lyme Bay ever again.

But in lucid moments realising that not only me, no human being, can ever know whether we will live to the next dawn. Whatever we do, however much we look after ourselves, tomorrow we may be struck down by a careless driver on the motor way or a suicide bomber who crosses our path.

And I can at least be reasonably certain, that I am not going to die because I have made my last will and testament. So it’s goodbye to superstition. Next time I see a ladder I shall make a detour to walk under it.

David Miliband, former Foreign Secretary and the front runner in the five horse race for the Laboun Party leadership,  brought his campaign to Gospel Oak this week. He did not have far to come. His house on Primrose  Hill is less than a mile away. But in socio-economic terms, the Queen’s Crescent community centre, in the heart of the Kentish Town council estates, is at the opposite end of the class divide.

Although the leadership election has still three months to go, and it was a hot and sweaty evening, with the World Cup and Wimbledon, keeping most of the nation at home on their sofas, the room was packed.

The tone was friendly and informal. He did not stand up making a pompous speech. He sat down in a white open necked shirt, answering questions put by a friendly journalist, Steve Richards, the Independent’s political editor. He then listened carefully to the questions from his audience, answered them fully, and stayed on afterwards to chat to those who came forward speak to him.

By most criteria it was a very succesful evening. But I was left with nagging doubts as to whether he can master the art of modern leadership, whether he is up to taking on Cameron and Clegg in next time’s TV debates.

He emphasised that too much emphasis had been put on his boyhood as  the left-wing intellectual and son of the Marxist scholar, Ralph Miliband. His schooling had been in Leeds and at Haverstock School, alongside many children from the Kentish Town council estates. True. But it is also true that he is even more at home at an Oxbridge style seminar.

Would make a first rate university teacher.

And, I took several photos. But the all came out making him look like Mr Bean.

By far the outstanding sporting drama of the week was the marathon struggle on the Court 18 between John Isner, the American seeded at 23, and Nicholas Mahut, a Frenchman, seeded at 48. Neither man was a star, but they kept the crowd entranced over three days, with some outstanding tennis and above all a determination never to give up. It was the longest tennis match ever, lasting 11 hours 5 minutes and totally 183 games. Isner served 112 aces, the fastest at 143 mph. Mahut served 103 aces, the fastest at 128 mph.

In the last set Isner won 70-68. It could have been boring, because 137 games followed the same pattern, with the server winning his own service. But not easily. Each player several times came near to breaking his opponent’s serve. And the stunning aces were interspersed with long rallies, which had the crowd holding its breath, the outcome of many games in doubt until the final point.

In the final set Isner was serving first. He is a tall rangy man, looking mostly relaxed and confident. 6 ft 3 ins and representing one of the world super powers. On the other side of the net, the man from France, who have not ruled the world since Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo in 1815. Mahut is smaller, wiry rather than hefty. Intense with concentration. Frequently, looking worried. As well he might. Because he had to serve second for 69 games, knowing all the time, that if he slipped up he was out.

Several times he covered his anguish with the towell over his head. When the end game he looked stunned.

But the crowd cheered and cheered, bringing him back on to his feet. And, the Queen, paying only her second visit ever to Wimbledon, went down to say a few kind words.

Little Joe got a lesson on how not to play football from the England team.

When you get the ball make sure you pass it to a Frenchman, the ones in the white shirts.

When you have a clear view of goal from twenty yards, show all your strength and boot the ball as near as possible to the top of the stand. If you are not feeling that strong, look fierce and shoot for the middle of the goal keeper’s chest.

Don’t worry abou defence. It’s the goal keeper’s job to stop the Germans getting the ball in the net.

The final score was German 4, England 1. But Germany might easily have scored seven or eight goals, given the number of times David James was facing three white shirts, with not a red shirt anywhere near the penalty area.

To Warborough yesterday for lunch with brother-in-law at the Six Bells, where the new landlord provided a half-way decent English lunch cooked by his young Polish chef. He has only been here four years but he speaks English with a classier accent than most of those born within earshot of the traffic in Camden High Street.

And after lunch a welcome change from the hype of the World Cup and Wimbledon. Cricket as it used to be. Played by the locals on the village green.

Undisturbed by police sirens. There was not a single Midsommer murder all day. 

Not a sign of Inspector Barnaby, CBE. He must have been at home polishing his medal.