A QUIZZICAL woman once circled John Sergeant finally asking "You're not someone?".

Well, yes, he is someone, BBC foreign and political correspondent, ITN political editor, now turned freelance. He is also someone else, Oxford Revue satirist Alan Bennett's 1960s sidekick in On The Margin, and latterly deadpan turn on Have I Got News For You?

Freed from the chains of journalistic office, the "someone" and the "someone else" in John Sergeant overlap in his joyously witty show, An Audience With...

As a child, he wanted to be a comedian. He was given a jester's face, he had the droll voice and the self-deprecation, and was torn between the comic and the serious at Oxford, studying politics by day, performing and writing sketches by night.

The serious was to win out, but the anti-authoritarian streak in him delighted in asking irksome questions. "Today I've managed to annoy the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Great Britain; this is very close to being my perfect day," he said with glee, recalling one particularly deadly aim of a Sergeant inquiry at George Bush and Mrs Thatcher.

Last night's show was a career review infused with the spirit of revue, as Sergeant enjoyed telling tales out of school and handled questions with panache. The serious won again in the end, when he selected his greatest politician: the 15th speaker he heard on the March to Washington rally in 1963. That speaker? Martin Luther King.

Updated: 09:17 Friday, March 18, 2005