"I would say during this period that he was absolutely central to saving Labour from total electoral oblivion," says trade unionist Nigel Stanley, who worked as Gould's parliamentary researcher. "He deserves a great deal of the credit for the modernisation of the party which occurred under Neil Kinnock."But credit for Gould became - and remains - a scarce commodity. Finding someone from the Labour Party prepared to speak on the record about Gould is about as easy as striking up a conversation on the Tube. I approached six of Labour's highest-ranking MPs for a comment on their former colleague All declined. They feel, as one aide snootily put it, that "There is nothing more to be said about Bryan Gould." Peter Mandelson, someone Gould loathes like a brother, didn't even return my telephone messages.Once they were very close: it was Mandelson, after all, who, as the party's director of communications, identified Gould as one of Labour's winning assets and promoted his image, making the shadow trade and industry spokesman a household figure.

Today, tacked to the wall of his office, there hangs an oil painting of an English chapel - a farewell gift from the Labour stalwarts of Dagenham, the constituency he represented for 11 years until 1994. The university was founded in 1963, a year after Gould quit New Zealand in pursuit of his runaway British dream. He is a small man in a large room, overlooking an 11,000-strong campus whose buildings could almost be described, by local standards, as ancient. "Take it to your family, to your communities, to New Zealand itself ..." And on he goes. Curiously, he does not add the United Kingdom as a port of final intellectual call.Inside his vice-chancellor's office, the strongest impression Bryan Gould gives is of being diminutive. "I would urge you to take what you have from this place of learning," he offers instead, all teeth and grins pinned from ear to ear. Just for a moment it's possible to imagine Gould forgetting where he is and launching into a well-practised House of Commons oration.

Then in English, exhorting graduates to go forth and intellectually replenish the world. He allows himself only a fleeting grin - conveying more than a whiff of self-approval - before rising from his place.First he speaks in Maori, thanking God (even though he is an agnostic) for the day. A hundred pairs of giggling eyes swing towards the diminutive man seated to the left of the speaker. But, no, Bryan Gould is too seasoned a pro to join in the public smirking at the reporters who hounded him over the $175,000 that the publicly-funded university spent upgrading his private residence on the leafy banks of the nearby Waikato River.

"We're a nation of knockers," he booms, "a nation with an international reputation for, ah, tilting at tall poppies." Puzzled glances are exchanged. "Such an attitude," he continues, "has recently been exemplified by certain sections of the news media which have tried to, ah, create a Waikato-style Watergate."Laughter breaks. For visiting journalists, it's a day for checking on the public health of New Zealand's most famous political junkie. We already know of his career's terrible highs and fearful lows; what we don't know, finally and irrecoverably, is whether he's kicked the habit.The university's chancellor, Gerald Bailey, stands behind the podium and clears his throat It has fallen to him to be Gould's warm-up act. Later there will be photos, hugs and hurrahs.On any other day, this would be a convocation of scant significance But this is not any other day.