the multiplex. Gore the movie star even makes jokes: when a cartoon frog sits in a saucepan to illustrate how temperature increases will be ignored until it is too late if they are gradual enough, he suddenly breaks into the animation to seize the cartoon critter with cinematic trickery. "The frog needed saving," he deadpans.

The signs are that it works. The film seems to have reached audiences that were long deaf to the green lobby - and to Gore when he was merely the Veep looking for an issue to promote.

Even George Bush, the great petrochemical warrior, has had to adjust his message: he isn't going to ban the V8 engine just yet, but he has admitted that the world is getting warmer.

Gore, meanwhile, has starred at the Sundance Film Festival, where the film was launched, at Edinburgh and even at the Music Video Awards in Manhattan. That is priceless access for a politician.

So what are his plans? The movie, cutting from the lecture hall to Gore on the farm, on