There is one thing, perhaps above all else, for which Cabinet Office minister and "Dome secretary" Charles Falconer is most famous. Back in the 1970s, when both men were young barristers, he shared a flat with Tony Blair.

The inevitable question: Is Lord Falconer just one of "Tony's crony"?

So what was it like - the carefree squalor of Withnail and I or the student anarchy of The Young Ones? Or given that the two men were young and making their way in the law, maybe This Life?

"People see the world in television terms," he laughs. But gamely, considering he generally discourages such enquiries, he considers the question. "More like The Young Ones, really."

And who was Tony - the Rik Mayall character who was a fan of Cliff Richard?

"No, I was the Rik Mayall character who was a fan of Cliff Richard," Lord Falconer corrects, possibly mindful of his reputation for being able to name the B-side to any single released in the 1960s. "But that is exactly the route I do not want to go down," he protests.

Tony Blair elevated his old flatmate to the Lords in order to make him a minister

His eye falls on the microphone on the table in front of us. "Are you recording this?" he asks. "I didn't know you were recording it at that point."

'Judged on my merits'

Aside from fending off questions about who did the washing up or not in the Blair-Falconer household, there is another inevitable line of inquiry Falconer faces whenever he is interviewed or profiled: isn't he just a crony?

It is an accusation that has dogged him since he came to public attention.

Shortly before the 1997 election, and actively encouraged by Blair, he sought selection as a parliamentary candidate for a safe Labour seat in Dudley. He was rejected - his decision to educate his four children at private school went down badly with the local party.

Becoming an MP would have given him direct democratic legitimacy, but after the election his former flatmate promptly elevated him to the House of Lords instead and appointed him solicitor general. Last summer, he was reshuffled to the Cabinet Office.

"Well, I'm in the government and I've been selected on the same terms as everybody else," is Falconer's reply to the crony charge. "If I do well no doubt I will be rewarded, and if I do badly I will be out on my ear like everybody else."

But how much does it irritate him that the word "crony" these days appears in any examination of his activities or achievements? "It doesn't actually irritate me that much. It's a fact of life that I had a relationship with the prime minister before. But as I say, I'm quite sure I'm being judged on my merits."

Too many committees to count

Accusations that the civil service is being politicised are "completely wrong"

It wasn't long after his ennoblement that the prime minister also put him on more cabinet sub-committees - in many ways the powerhouse of government business - than any other minister bar the leader of the House of Commons. The charge of cronyism was renewed.

Falconer himself isn't sure of the exact number of committees on which he sits. "Er, I don't know - 14, 15," he says when I ask him (the answer is 14).

Lord Falconer was appointed Cabinet Office minister last summer

"Cabinet sub-committees are a means whereby members of the government express their views in relation to particular things. They frequently do it in correspondence rather than in committee and therefore it's sometimes difficult to actually identify what the precise number is, but I think it's 14."

As a result of this and his close friendship with the Blairs he is now a regular fixture in the "power lists" drawn up by newspapers of the most important and influential individuals in the country.

As a Cabinet Office minister Falconer's brief includes the business of government itself: how it works and how it could be improved. As such, this covers the doings of Whitehall and the civil service. Does he concede the fears raised not only by Conservatives but also some former civil servants, at the prospect of politicisation of the civil service?

He rejects as "completely wrong" claims that the civil service may be being bent to the party in power's political will. But the accusation is made on a semi-regular basis by opposition parties. The latest incident that will undoubtedly provoke Tory ire are plans by Number Ten and the Cabinet Office to install a computerised rapid rebuttal, Excalibur-style facility in Whitehall.

Excalibur comes to Whitehall?

Excalibur is the much-vaunted computerised rebuttal and attack system that served Labour so well in opposition. Labour officials proudly referred to the giant database as the party's not-so-secret secret weapon during the run-up to the last election.

Based at the party's Millbank headquarters, details of every policy pronouncement and public utterance from Conservative politicians and others are fed into it, to be retrieved at the touch of a button whenever a rebuttal or attack is called for. Falconer confirms that the government is indeed looking at importing a similar facility into Whitehall, and sees little problem with doing so.

Labour's Millbank Tower HQ houses what party officials describe as their "secret weapon", the Excalibur computer database

"The newspapers are full all the time of stories about health, stories about education, stories about crime, stories about the criminal justice system. Most of those stories involve various facts," he points out.

"Since time began, each of these departments had press officers, designed to correct errors of fact or to describe where the thrust of a story may be wrong. The whole government, and the prime minister in particular, is responsible for describing the whole of the government's position.

"It seems to me extraordinary that an organisation like this" - government, that is - "has not got a means of easily picking facts on an information technology basis to respond to all the things that are said out there.

"Why is that politicising the civil service? Far from it. It seems to me to be simply moving forward in a way that they would regard as sensible."

'Explanation', not spin

Lord Falconer on how Whitehall needs to be able to undermine Opposition accusations

What, however, of the danger that this correction of the "thrust of a story" bleeds over into party political spin, as with the Millbank model? Is Falconer saying that a Whitehall version won't include, say, details of what opposition politicians were saying months, or even years ago? This, after all, was one of the beauties of Excalibur for Labour.

He responds by citing in example Labour's pre-election criticism of policies being enacted by the Department of Health.

Civil servants could be asked to trawl through previous policy statements by Opposition politicians

"The Department of Health would respond, dealing with the accusation, undermining the accusation where it was appropriate in order to support government policy - which might well involve pointing out inconsistencies between what this fellow had said and that person had said, and giving the facts."

"When one is talking about 'the government' as opposed to 'the party', it's impossible and ridiculous for the government not to be able to respond as hard as possible when what they are dealing with is an attack on government policy. So that will from time to time involve pointing out flaws, inconsistencies and inaccuracies in the attacks that are being made on government."

Isn't this very much like the good use Labour has made of Excalibur?

"Well no," Falconer insists. "The issue it is dealing with is the explanation of government policy. Government policy in one sense is the subject of politics because politicians attack government policy, as well, if they are government ministers, as defending government policy."

Defending government against opposition

He believes differentiating between this and party political work will not prove too difficult. "Some things are plainly pure politics. So, for example, attacks on the quality of the leadership of the Conservative Party is pure politics, obviously.

"But what most of government is about, and it's what government-employed press officers have been doing since time began, is defending the government's record and polices against detailed attacks from, inter alia, members of the Opposition.

"I mean, obviously there have to be lines somewhere. There's always been, on the very edges, difficulties about the lines. But this is not a new problem, it's a problem since time began, and speaking entirely for myself I have found that government-employed press officers have no difficulty in establishing where the lines are."

Lord Falconer inherited responsibility for the Millennium Dome from Peter Mandelson last year

But are Falconer and his ministerial colleagues going to be instructing civil servants to go away and find, say, what shadow chancellor Francis Maude has ever said about X, Y or Z? It seems the answer is Yes.

"Well if a particular opposition spokesman says 'I think the government is spending too much' on Wednesday, and then on Thursday he says 'I think the government is spending too little', is it right or is it wrong for the Treasury to say 'The man who attacked us for spending too little today actually said yesterday that we were spending too much. Here are the facts on what we are spending'?

"Now that does not seem to me to be improper. And indeed, you know, that seems to be to be how one would conduct any sensible defence of a government programme."

'Nothing sinister'

He must, however, be aware that such actions will draw fierce complaints from the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats - not to mention the charges of sinister, Big Brother-style computer monitoring and logging of everything any politician says.

"I have read quite a lot of stuff about this sinister-ness of the computer system, and seeing it from the inside, it is not at all sinister," Falconer protests.

"It appears, when you look at the way it's being dealt with, a quite - mundane is the wrong word - but quite a workaday process of getting as many facts as possible and making sure that computers have access to sources of facts within the government, simply so you can get the facts out.

"And the rebuttal system is a means of getting as much access to as many relevant and salient facts as possible."

The dissonance between what Falconer insists is the reality of plans for such a system and what the media makes of them matches that between his own position and what he reads about himself as the government's "deputy enforcer", chief crony, New Labour's "First Flat-mate" and the like.

"Much of what I read about myself bears no relation to the reality that I feel that my life is, you know," he protests. "The papers write about things in a very dramatic sort of way, whereas my life feels much more mundane and workaday than that."

Mundane and workaday? Does he mean he isn't using his swipe-card to nip through the connecting internal door between Number 10 and the Cabinet Office all the time?