Comment: people make this city special says Ken... with a sip of whine

"Less an election broadcast than a film about London, Ken's relationship to the city he loves," gushes the PR handout.

The question of course, is rather how much London still loves Ken after eight years of him. So he went a-wooing us last night in a mackintosh which looks like a remnant of his GLC days and a cross-party yellow tie.

The nasal whine was muted into a seductive near whisper.

He was nice to everyone he meets, in a faintly proprietorial kind of way. "It's the people that make London special," said Ken. I shudder to think what fate awaits a mayoral candidate who says that Londoners are much over-rated. This was nice Ken: no sign of the rude one who slaps down those who question his authority or judgements and who has been put in a locked cupboard for the duration of the campaign.

Nice Ken gives good broadcast: he personalises everything from the growth of Canary Wharf to Crossrail and the Mayor's budget with an easy touch that many Westminster politicians would give their second home allowances to copy. He is, whatever you think of him. always a watchable figure. His tone darkened at the dire suggestion someone else might have a go at the job.

Indeed, it sounded as if Mr Livingstone was so convinced that no one else could handle being mayor that he might take a Chairman Mao view of the job and stay on till his death, on the grounds that only he understood how to do it.

You could tell this wasn't quite real life because everyone Ken met looked so thrilled to see him, in the manner of Beijing State Film productions.

"This man has changed my life as a disabled person," says a woman from a wheelchair. "If they don't make him mayor again, I'm going to go mad," quavers a spirit of the Blitz lady. "Don't get up I'm just the Mayor, not royalty," says Ken to a roomful of happy pensioners.

This outbreak of modesty is somewhat undermined when he says that who we vote for as mayor is "arguably more important" than the next choice of Prime Minister. Slightly less important than the Queen, lots more important than Gordon. That won't go unnoticed in Number 10.

One careless slip - he didn't say a Boris-shaped one, but we got the point - and all London's achievements could turn into "a pretty catastrophic decline".

Could Ken's rival run "an extremely complex machine?" Chairman Ken didn't think so. Vote for me, he might as well have concluded, "In case the other guy gets it."