No Marx out of 10 for Ben

I can't, and no matter how many years his witless musicals may play to packed houses, there's no doubt what the man's number one sell-out will always be. Himself.

Being the BBC's most consistently incisive and compelling interview strand, Hardtalk is naturally scheduled in the middle of the night on a digital channel, but it's invariably well worth the bother of recording.

Few speakers emerge unsinged from their intense grilling, and Elton was no exception, repeatedly contradicting himself as he tried to argue he'd never really been a Leftwing polemicist at all, just a knockabout traditional comedian.

"My politics haven't changed... I was never anti-establishment," lied the man who used to be anti-Establishment but isn't any more, then he told us that he won't be doing any more Queen and Rod Stewart-style musicals ("it's not like I've got a template"), before admitting that he's already making plans for We Will Rock You II.

As for his claim that "I don't read the reviews, if you did you'd go mad", that sat oddly with his frequent citations of the bad crits he's received ("I remember the Daily Telegraph saying..." and so on), so perhaps the madness has already set in.

"I was a young man of 22 on live TV while the miners were in pitched battles with police," continued our Dave Spart manqué, recalling those heady revolutionary days of 1984, but forgetting that he'd earlier insisted (when declaring that he'd started out as a writer, not a performer): "I only got my break as a stand up in 1986."

And listening to the former Leftwing firebrand expressing staunch support for the monarchy, Churchill, and the attack on Iraq, the friend of Lord Lloyd-Webber began to remind me of a younger version of Paul Johnson, the New Statesman editor who later embraced Right-wingery, and began denouncing everything he'd once believe in.

Johnson, of course, famously used to lecture us all on the sanctity of marriage and the evils of infidelity, before his longtime mistress came to light.

But I'm certain that Mr Elton will never be similarly caught out in the trouser department. Well, he's clearly been infatuated with himself ever since he got his first mirror, and believe me, that's one love that will last a lifetime.

Over the past seven years, Hardtalk (anchored by Tim Sebastian and Lyse Doucet) has amassed a deserved worldwide reputation for trenchant, first-class political interviewing.

The recently-launched Hardtalk Extra strand now seems destined to achieve the same in the world of arts and entertainment, by allowing the genuinely creative to explain themselves at length, while giving the frauds sufficient rope with which to hang themselves.

As for Elton, his wishy-washy "green" politics strike me as a brand personalisation of those notes in hotels that ask you to use the same towel over and over, by speaking of "little things we can all do to protect the environment... you can help reduce the amount of chemicals we use for cleaning".

In other words, you can help to increase our profit margins by reducing our laundry bill, and using the same towel until it turns brown.