His ambitions left Kipling looking wimpish.

First a Government was to be removed. The Taleban must "surrender".

Then all terrorism was to be wiped off the face of the Earth:"We will take action at every level."  Then all who give succour to terrorists would be zapped, being "every bit as guilty".

This "force for good" was something Britain was to "pride in leading".

And he had hardly started. To his audience's astonishment, after tipping his wings over the Balkans ("we won"), Blair threw the prime-ministerial VC10 into a steep starboard bank and headed for Africa.

Far below, Rwanda caught his eye. If the slaughter of millions that happened there eight years ago should be repeated, "we would have a moral duty to act there also". As the skies above Rwanda filled with British parachutes, Blair roared northwest to Sierra Leone. "We were there," he declared.

Actually, we still are. By page 5 of his speech, the greater part of Britain's Armed Forces was earmarked for battle across the globe.

National conscription loomed. Peering from the cockpit Blair shrugged off such details - for what was below? An immense, impenetrable jungle cut by a vast river stretching half way across Africa.

Engines roar. He wheels south. We must "sort out", he said, the Congo.

Crikey. The cockpit radio crackles as Blair speaks. "Hello, Aldershot, are you receiving me? 50,000 more troops - with parachutes, submersibles, Zodiacs, malaria pills and jungle survival kits . . .

". . . Hello? Hello? There aren't any left? Damn. Get me Gordon Brown."

He flies on. Zambia slips beneath him, mercifully, in a moment of inattention. Sudan, Eritrea, Somalia, Kenya, Zanzibar, are hidden below the horizon behind, thank God. But what's this? Oops. Zimbabwe.

"No excuses!" Blair cries, "no tolerance of" . . . the activities of Mr Mugabe's henchmen. "Proper commercial, legal and financial systems! The will . . . to broker agreements for peace and provide troops to police them!".  Locked into the aircraft loo the Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon, was softly weeping. "Africa is a scar," Blair declared. "We could heal it."

Nor was there limit to the great healer's optimism. As cloudbanks roll beneath his rhetorical journey - now to create a Palestinian homeland, secure the state of Israel and - hey presto! - sort out the Middle East - Mr Blair's thoughts turn to meteorology. "We could defeat climate change if we chose to. Kyoto is right! "But it's only a start!".  Cripes. The Prime Minister then vowed to "create energy without destroying our planet; we could provide work and trade without deforestation".  

Time to head home, via a gushing transatlantic tribute to American values. Land rises in the east. Uh-oh. Ireland. "The Unionists must accept . . . the Republicans must show."  Musts, shoulds and wills peppered his text like bulletholes in a Kabul ceiling.

As the PM brought his oratorical jetliner into land at Brighton yesterday, he looked exhausted. His audience looked exhausted. The Chancellor looked inscrutable.