Japanese Pm Sings Elvis With Cruise

It may have taken Tom Cruise by surprise, but when the Japanese prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, burst into spirited song at a meeting with the Hollywood star in Tokyo yesterday he was merely demonstrating a now well-worn truth: if you want to get ahead in politics, rock'n'roll is today's equivalent of kissing babies.

"He's really an extraordinary man - and a pretty good singer. We sang Elvis to gether," a still bemused Cruise, in Japan to promote his latest film, The Last Samurai, said after meeting Mr Koizumi at his official residence. "I think he's a charismatic and very intelligent man."

The actor declined to reveal which of Presley's many hits he sang with Mr Koizumi, an eclectic music lover whose favourites also include the rather more testing classical strains of Wagner. But the choice will have been wide: the extrovert Japanese premier has released a CD of his karaoke renditions, modestly entitled Junichiro Koizumi Presents My Favourite Elvis Songs.

The Japanese premier is not, of course, the first political leader to exercise his vocal chords in pursuit of popularity. The Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi (who started life as a cruise-ship crooner), recently recorded a CD of popular songs with a Neapolitan warbler who holds down the not-quite-so glamorous part-time job of carpark attendant.

Meanwhile, France's po-faced former Socialist prime minister, Lionel Jospin, once unwisely accepted an invitation to sing Les Feuilles Mortes (Autumn Leaves) on a primetime TV chatshow during his 2002 presidential election campaign. It probably did much to wreck his chances.

Bill Clinton, an enthusiastic and telegenic saxophonist, was once invited to entertain world leaders at the G8 summit in Birmingham with a late-night jamming session at the local branch of Ronnie Scott's jazz club, prompting the bandleader, George Melly, to ask: "Have they warned the waitresses?"

A fellow north American leader, Canada's prime minister, Jean Chrétien, is no mean trombonist.

Some even have genuine talent: Sir Edward Heath was a trained organ scholar and pianist and up to conducting Elgar. Helmut Schmidt, the former West German chancellor, played the third piano in a 1981 recording of Mozart's Concerto in F major for three pianos with the London Philharmonic.

But few can match the mastery of such genuine maestros as Jan Paderewski, a virtuoso concert pianist and composer who had the misfortune to become Polish prime minister in 1919, or indeed Bhumibol Adulyadej, the king of Thailand and the world's only multi-instrumental monarch, who in 1946 jammed for 90 minutes with the swing clarinettist Benny Goodman.

Mr Koizumi has some way to go yet.

High notes that fell flat

The former Russian president Boris Yeltsin (who had the excuse that he was manifestly drunk at the time) disastrously attempted a spirited Russian song, complete with dance movements, during an election campaign

Former French president Valery Giscard d'Estaing played accordion on nationwide TV but still lost his 1981 election race against Francois Mitterrand: he could not give the price of a baguette or a metro ticket.

Cherie Blair saved her husband's face before Chinese students in Beijing last month. Asked to sing a song, Mr Blair turned to his wife, who struggled through the first verse of the Beatles' When I'm 64.

Bill Clinton, who played his saxophone at his inauguration, had a recording made of a session with Vaclav Havel in a Prague bar.