You could tell they had been Bill Clintoned. Holding his 4lb doorstop tightly in both hands, no one walked away from Bubba's book signing without a dreamy smile and a deep cerise flush running down their necks.

One man queued for 25 hours; most stood outside Waterstone's in Piccadilly for six hours; all paid £21.99 (discounted by £4) for his 957-page autobiography before they were granted the briefest of audiences with the 42nd president of the United States. He shook their hands, scrawled "Bill Clinton" in his autobiography, and flashed them that famous, slack-jawed grin.

Queue junkies, autograph hunters, eBay entrepreneurs hoping to flog their signed copies over the internet, a Sri Lankan sales rep and even Enoch Powell's former assistant joined the queue. By 11am, 700 people had lined up, snaking back toward the Ritz, where Mr Clinton, 57, enjoyed a late breakfast after arriving at 3am from Berlin for a three-day promotional tour.

"He shook my hand at first but then he reached over and touched my hand again when he was talking about Camp David, which I thought was amazing," said Rachel Byrd. The 23-year-old student from Bath was second in the queue and questioned him about the Camp David talks, the subject of her dissertation.

"I asked, 'Did Camp David ultimately fail because of the leaders or the issues?' He said he never thought that it would succeed, but he thought it was more the leaders than the issues."

Sniffer dogs and CIA officers surveyed the scene as erudite discussions of international politics echoed up and down the queue. But it was the "C" word that was on everyone's lips. Mr Clinton had charisma, and everyone wanted to be touched by it.

The silver-haired charmer kept his crowd waiting for 21 minutes, but there was applause when he entered the shop, where his signing had been set up in front of the Erotica and True Crime sections.

First in line was Martin Shanahan, 41, a gardener from north-west London, who had arrived at 12pm on Sunday with his special chair from Wimbledon and the patience of a saint, born out of watching U2 560 times. "This is the best gig in town," he said, clutching his second copy of Clinton's tome. Thanking the ex-president for his contribution to the Irish peace process, he got "To Martin" written in his book, despite the "no dedications" rule at the signing.

Most of the crowd were men, but the women present were in a forgiving mood. Glenda Farrar had taken a coach from Stafford at 2am to get to London. "He might have failings as a man, but which man hasn't got failings like that?" she asked.

Naz Khan from Twickenham reckoned every woman found him attractive. "He had very warm hands," she giggled.

"I work for the Bush campaign," said Aubrey Colvard, 21, one of three US students with immaculate hair and all-American smiles. "But I figured, why not come here?"

Did they sympathise with Monica Lewinsky? "No," they chorused.

"She milked it for all it was worth," said Jessica Menter, 20. "He said, 'I hope you enjoy my book'," said Rita Guy, who had brought her father, Enoch Powell's former assistant, to meet him.

Mr Clinton's youngest fan was Chelsea Miller, two, who wore a John Kerry sticker. "She's not going to read the book just now, but she will," insisted her mother, Margo.

Cooled by an electric fan, and pepped up by two bottles of chilled Coke, Mr Clinton stood for the signing. He has already put his name in 25,000 copies of My Life during his US promotional tour.

When the queue was halted at 2.50pm he had signed another 1,000 books: more than his wife Hillary did at the same venue and only marginally fewer than in last year's Harry Potter frenzy.

Crowd-pleasing to the last, he treated fans to a 20-minute walkabout outside the shop before being whisked to his next engagement.