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Is the real Tony Blair still alive?

Rumours burst around London last week like cluster bomblets as speculation increased that the real Tony Blair may have been killed in the initial stages of the war against Iraq or possibly even earlier.

The evidence has become compelling as television pictures of the socialist stalwart show an amazing variety in looks and behaviour over the past few months. Many of those watching have concluded that a variety of doppelgangers have appeared to impersonate the Greatest Ever Briton.

Towards the end of last year, a young and relaxed-looking Blair appeared on screens around the world, talking about the virtues of international co-operation and the need to involve the UK's European allies in solving the problem of Iraq. He spoke with a smooth and reassuring voice while retaining a good deal of reasonableness.

By early this year, the supposed Blair was rather less keen on his partners in Europe but still insisting that there should be a second United Nations resolution ahead of any attack on Saddam Hussein's regime. The man in the pictures was considerably older and less cheerful that the one seen before. The pitch and tone of his voice was still measured but "spikes" of panic could be made out and these mingled with increasing self-righteousness.

And since the war has begun, the figure making public appearances is completely different: strident and hawkish, while speaking in a tenor that betrayed no doubts whatsoever about what was being done in his name.

"These are clearly not all the same person," one expert on ID verification told us after he studied the clips we provided. "Of course some of the shots we've seen may have been pre-recorded," he noted. "We know he has doubles — the so-called 'New Labour clones' who could step into his shoes at a moment's notice to effortlessly intone the party line, but there are always give-away clues."

The feverish conjecture has now spread overseas. "If you look at the background of recent footage there's no real way of determining where he is," uttered one crazed analyst from Basra University's Media Studies department. "And you see that flag in the background? It's fluttering. How come? There's no wind on the moon is there? It's a massive CIA-sponsored conspiracy. Do you want to know what really happened to Kennedy?"

"Even if he is alive, who knows where the real Tony Blair is now?" asked one grim-faced journalist. "He could be holed up in Islington intending to go down in a blaze of urban warfare or he could have fled to his faction's rural stronghold in Tuscany. He could live there, completely undetected, for years."

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