http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1779360,00.htmlAl Gore has had plenty of time to develop a self-deprecating sense of humour over the past six years, and it shows. "My name is Al Gore, and I used to be the next president of the United States," the broad-shouldered 58-year-old tells audiences wherever he goes.
The line has replaced an earlier joke - "You win some, you lose some, and then there's that little-known third category" - but the message in both cases is the same: laugh along with me, please, because otherwise, imagining how different things could have been, we might have to cry.
It is a wry kind of wit, of a sort that might have helped the former vice-president in the 2000 election campaign, when he was widely lambasted as wooden and robotic. And it is tinged with an anger that might have come in handy during the supreme court battle with George Bush, when many of Mr Gore's own supporters felt he acted spinelessly. But the Gore of 2006 is a different person and, it appears, Americans have begun to take notice.
The reason for Mr Gore's heightened profile is a documentary about his most passionately held concern - the "planetary emergency" of global warming - that he has been shopping to politicians and other opinion-formers over the last few weeks. (On Wednesday, he showed it to members of Congress; next week the Gore roadshow crosses the Atlantic for the Guardian Hay Festival.)
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