Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London: The West Wing has nothing on the real-life antics of the king of City Hall Â

It's a fine midsummer's day and Ken Livingstone is doing what he does best, giving a television interview.

Perched high on the roof of his spectacular new City Hall, the Mayor of London is offering his wit and wisdom with the perfect backdrop of Tower Bridge and Canary Wharf in the distance.

For all its gleaming Norman Foster-designed modernity, Mr Livingstone's latest power base has more than a flavour of the old Greater London Council. Londoners of all colours and classes mingle in its public café and face-painted children pack the fairground in the adjacent park.

But as the pleasure cruisers slip languidly by on the Thames below, their cockney skippers pointing out "Red Ken's glass testicle", Mr Livingstone is suddenly caught off guard by his interviewer.

What does he think of office romances? Acutely sensitive to criticism of his relationship with Emma Beal, his office manager and pregnant partner, the Mayor looks slightly uneasy.

"I would have thought that 50 per cent of all relationships start at work. That's where in the modern world most people meet people," he says.

Undaunted, the bullish interviewer goes one step further, asking if it is "appropriate" for an alcoholic be given a senior post in politics. Whoa. The question conjures up a raft of newspaper headlines about Mr Livingstone's now infamous "drunken party fracas" involving him and his partner. Nevertheless, the Mayor's composure remains intact. "It shows an incredible strength of character that you can overcome these problems and can carry on and work properly," he says. "Here you've got a human being who's had some real problems and who has overcome them."

If this all sounds a bit too good to be true, it is. Unfortunately for Mr Livingstone's critics, the interview is a spoof, a knowing trailer for a new series of West Wing, Channel 4's political drama set in the White House. The questions are not about his own conduct, they are about the likes of Josh and Donna and Leo, fictional aides of a fictional US president. As it is his favourite television programme ("I build my Sunday evenings around it"), the Mayor has agreed to give his services for free.

And despite the apparently awkward questions, as he heads off to his very own East Wing, the mayoral suite of offices that looks down the Thames to Docklands and beyond, Mr Livingstone is in an uncommonly good mood.

The former GLC leader has just had his worst few weeks since winning the mayoralty two years ago. He has been accused of assaulting a partygoer, rejected again by the Labour Party, and told to cough up £4m in costs for a failed legal challenge to part-privatisation of the Tube.

But in the past few days, the Mayor has finally received some good news. His flagship plans for a £5 congestion charge for the capital were, in effect, given the go-ahead when the High Court rejected a legal challenge by Tory boroughs. "Newt" Labour's tail is up again and, like the rest of the political world, he is finally looking forward to a summer holiday.

Back in his office, littered with trinkets from mayors around the globe, Mr Livingstone's hangdog expression is lighter, the familiar drone is less world-weary. He talks animatedly about his plans to cut traffic, due to come into operation next February.

"One of the real problems we have got in London is that you can't tell whether a journey is going to take 10 minutes or half an hour. And it is consistently getting worse," he says. "Half the time you are in central London you are in a jam, stalled. Whereas it used to be rush hours, and then the rest of the day was reasonable, now it is all the way through. That's not good for businesses or anyone."

His experts predict that the congestion charge will cut car use by 15 per cent, equivalent to having school holiday traffic all year round. The idea has never been tried in a major Western capital and the world will be watching the project closely.

"We've had a stream of mayors coming over and saying if it works we will do it," Mr Livingstone says. "The thing is there's huge political risk in this. All our modelling and prediction we've done, but until someone actually tries it you can't be certain it will work. There will be a very difficult first two months as people settle into the new patterns it throws up."

Despite his enthusiasm, it sounds as though the man with the most famous nasal whine in Britain is actually nervous about sticking his decongestant up the noses of Londoners. "If it comes in and there's no reduction in congestion then you'd have to decide one of two things: is that because the charge isn't high enough or is there some fundamental flaw. If there's a fundamental flaw, then you'd most probably pull the scheme," he says.

The person responsible for enacting Mr Livingstone's strategy on the congestion charge, as well as the buses and the Tube, is Bob Kiley, his transport commissioner.

Yet rumours in recent weeks have suggested a rift between the two men. Some claim Mr Kiley was furious at the Mayor's spin doctors for implying that he, rather than Mr Livingstone, pushed the court challenge to the Government's public-private partnership (PPP).

The Mayor is swiftly dismissive of the claims. "Complete nonsense. Of all the public officials I have worked with in 31 years since I was first elected to Lambeth council, Bob is actually the one I most enjoy working with. He's in a class of his own," he says.

The congestion charge will be the most visible aspect of Mr Livingstone's first term, but he points to other achievements such as the large increase in bus usage and many more police on the streets.

He is on course to increase police numbers to 30,000 by 2004 and by 2006 could have the 35,000 that Sir John Stephens, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, says he needs to "reclaim the streets" from criminals. Specialist transport police now regularly patrol bus routes.

The Mayor is particularly proud of the new Hungerford pedestrian bridge across the Thames. "It has had none of the problems of the wobbly bridge and yet no one praises it, probably because I paid for it," he says.

And yet, somewhat like Tony Blair, he claims he is not getting the credit for his achievements in the media. The London Evening Standard is singled out for opprobrium. "It's a media problem and we are totally reliant on the Evening Standard. When Max [Hastings, its former editor] was there it was very good, he wanted to influence the national political debate and that meant serious reporting," he says. "Now it's filled with stuff about poor old motorists, wicked Red Ken, red lights blah blah."

The Standard's new editor, Veronica Wadley, is responsible for introducing a more right-wing agenda and a new emphasis on lifestyle, he claims. "I mean, I didn't know what botox was until Wadley took over. It's a bit like the invasion of the body snatchers. It still looks like the Evening Standard but it is now the London Evening Mail. And London is not natural Daily Mail territory."

Of course, his irritation stems largely from the Standard's most recent campaign against him, the one that centred on that party. He says he and his family suffered "terrible harassment" at the height of its claims that he assaulted one of the guests.

The matter is far from over though, with an investigation by the ethical standards officer of the Standards Board for England, a new conduct watchdog for all local councillors, only just started. Mr Livingstone says he would have preferred the police to check the claims and counterclaims.

"They have all the skills of 180 years of how to collect evidence from witnesses. They would have gone in and interviewed people and come up with a picture very rapidly," he says. "Whether what presumably are the accountants and financial people who predominate the standards board have this skill is another matter."

Whatever else it did, the party affair seemed to hammer the final nail in his coffin in terms of readmission to the Labour Party. Yet within hours of the party's national executive committee (NEC) ruling that he should remain in the wilderness, his Labour deputy mayor, Nicky Gavron, had declared she would run for the nomination. Given her pledge to run an amicable campaign and to urge voters to use their second preference for Mr Livingstone, Ms Gavron looks very like a "Livingstone Labour" candidate. Many suspect that she wants to run not to replace Ken but to make it easier for him to win. When asked if there was any collusion before her declaration, Mr Livingstone is surprisingly candid about his role.

"I suggested it about a week before the NEC meeting when we realised we were going to be about two or three votes short. My view then was that the big danger was that the Labour campaign would be a campaign against me for 18 months, sufficiently damaging me so that [Steven] Norris [his Tory rival] could come in.

"And so I said to Nicky: 'Look, I think you should run so that if I go down, you can win but the policies and the huge amount of work that's gone on here with the buses, the police targets, the London plan, that carries on'."

The Mayor claims that if Ms Gavron is the candidate, there will be no viciousness in the campaign and "none of the personal smears and all that stuff".

He would certainly have a rougher ride from Tony Banks, a former ally at the GLC but now implacable foe. Mr Banks is favoured by some to win Labour's nomination, but the Mayor is scathing about his career, his motivation and his chances.

"I don't think Tony will be the Labour candidate. Tony is clearly very bitter and I don't think that's simply about me," he says. "I think that's exactly what's wrong with British politics that someone like Tony, who has real ability and devotes his life to politics, comes to the end of their political career and they are able to look back on two years as chair of the general purposes committee of the GLC, two years as chair of the arts committee on the GLC and two years as sports minister. That's six years in relatively minor roles." Ouch.

Yet, although it may look as though Citizen Ken is the cuckoo in New Labour's mayoral nest, in many ways it is striking just how similar he is to Tony Blair. Both men are accused of failing to deliver on their grand promises but blame the press. They share a fondness for the police and big business. Both love policy-making by bar chart, plotting a line on a graph and telling their officials to get on with it. Each of them is an incorrigible centraliser, eager to use the levers of power. Oh, and both are fathers, one a prospective father at least, of babies in their middle age.

Given all these similarities, wouldn't it be a good idea to call his own first offspring Tony? Mr Livingstone's recent firm rejection by the Prime Minister, not to mention his antipathy to one T Banks, is perhaps still in his mind when he answers. "No, definitely not."

The CV: From newts to congestion charges

Kenneth Robert Livingstone: Born 17 June 1945

Educated: Tulse Hill Comprehensive, Philippa Fawcett College of Education (Teacher's Certificate)

Career: Technician, Chester Beatty Cancer Research Institute, 1962-70.

Political career: Joined Labour Party, 1969; Lambeth councillor, 1971-78; Camden councillor, 1978-82; GLC councillor, 1973-86: leader of council and Labour group, 1981-86. MP for Brent East, June 1987-2001; Mayor of London, 2000-

Recreations: Cinema, science fiction, gardening, natural history