You know Bowie has become a bandwagon when Tony Blair joins it

One of the admirable things about the Thin White Duke was his unwillingness to accept the Establishment’s embrace

Bowie in New York in around 1970 (Getty)

As public figures with nothing to do with modern music fall over each other to deliver their encomium on David Bowie, it is tempting to believe that much of what we’ve read and heard these past few lachrymose days says more about the person delivering the tribute than the poor object of their veneration.

What on earth persuaded Tony Blair to go to print with a piece in which he said there was no one quite like Bowie? Of course, yes, in the manner of the modern world, he needed to interpose himself in someone else’s story. Bowie was, according to the former First Lord of the Treasury, “unfailingly polite” when he went to Chequers for dinner, at which Blair was “genuinely star-struck”. Alastair Campbell confirmed in a tweet that the only other time he’d seen Blair so awed was when he met Barbra Streisand.

We now know from the transcripts of Blair’s conversations with Bill Clinton that even world leaders are capable of banal thought. (“Why is Leeds Castle in Kent?” asks the President. “I don’t know,” says Blair. “If I were in Leeds, I’d be pissed off that Kent has my castle,” comes the presidential rejoinder. “Yes, I would too,” is all Blair could muster in response.) Nevertheless, given the access Blair had to some of the contemporary world’s most inspiring figures over his decade in Downing Street, it is risible (or incredible) that Barbra and Bowie are the only people who truly impressed him.

Then there’s David Cameron, who tweeted that Bowie was “a pop genius”, following the convention that requires a Prime Minister to go public with an homage, even when he has no connection or, sometimes, even any appreciation of the deceased. The Prime Minister may believe that Bowie was a genius, but obviously not enough of a genius for one of his songs to displace Benny Hill’s “Ernie – The Fastest Milkman in the West” from his choices on Desert Island Discs. Similarly, Bowie didn’t figure among the eight discs Blair would take to a desert island.

So what would Bowie himself have made of all this? Here’s a man who turned down an CBE in 2000 and then, three years later, a knighthood, saying “I would never have any intention of accepting anything like that. It’s not what I spent my life working for.” Of the many admirable things about Bowie, his unwillingness to accept the embrace of the Establishment – we should forgive him his visit to Chequers: who wouldn’t, given the chance? – was principled, and he was resolute in his stance in a way few artists and performers are these days. While he would have been “unfailingly polite” in response to a Prime Ministerial paean of praise, it is doubtful that the Thin White Duke (a non-hereditary title, by the way) would have had his head turned by it.

And when it comes to the tributes to Bowie being a tad too self-revelatory, nothing will beat Stephen Glover’s piece in the Daily Mail. I hope that Mr Glover, once of this parish, wouldn’t mind my saying that he’s someone who would have appeared middle-aged as a teenager, but his admission that he never dyed his hair, dressed in an androgynous way or took large quantities of cocaine was truly shocking for all of us.