"There never should have been a need for an IRA. And in the late Sixties and early Seventies, the British should have had a entirely different response to what was going on. If I had been Prime Minister at the time, I would have gone in there to the Protestant leaders, sat them all down, slapped them silly, 'Look you f**kers, this isn't the way we run things. You're going to cause a really big mess here. So you either shape up or you're going to the time-out room.' Seriously, I would have shown some leadership that was lacking at the time."

There is an arrogance to Moore which is quite unattractive. But maybe that degree of self-belief is what you need when you set yourself up against the corporate and political establishment. I mean, whoever heard of a timid battering ram? And this, after all, is the man who said that instead of founding Israel he would have put the Germans in the desert and given the Jews Bavaria.

He's a polemicist, a wind-up merchant. That's what he does. We can't take pleasure in watching him giving Uncle Sam a kicking and then cry foul when he does the same to John Bull. And make no mistake, there will be more strong words to come.

If "Bowling For Columbine" is a scathing attack on contemporary America, his next film "is going to put the nail in the coffin" of the Bush administration.