It was a local mother who smelt a rat - council grasscutters mowing the grass at 6AM? Swarms of police searching bins and sweeping the flats? Marksmen taking up position? Coppers remained tight-lipped when local kids asked what was going on - what with the new model workhouse - sorry, SureStart Centre - cordoned off.

Welcome to the Weston Estate in Southampton,recipient of New Deal money for window-dressing poverty. We could only guess which New Labour bigwig was coming,to lecture us on our rights and responsibilities. As it was, it was Holy Tony and his sidekick Prescott who tried to sneak in under a security blanket - but word had got out. Greeted with the choice epithets'War Criminal' and 'Mass-Murderer' the gruesome twosome encountered more heckling from locals as the oxygen of publicity swirled around them.