Here was the little master giving a masterclass in the art of electioneering.

"You never forget doing this," said he. "I really quite love it."

John Howard, however, wasn't standing for election.

"I'm a bookseller these days," he chuckled. "I'm in small business."

The bookseller - the best-selling author, to be a little more precise - had come to the vast Eastland shopping centre in Ringwood to do what he's done a thousand times before, sweeping among unsuspecting shoppers, no need these Wi-Fi days to avoid tripping over TV camera cables, glad-handing all in sight.

His own electioneering days are, of course, long gone, and it was possible to discern an easy freedom in his strolling, chucking babies under the chin, inquiring of mothers how many little darlings they had, approving mightily of everyone and everything in range.

He was there for Denis Napthine, just a few days before an election that polls predict he is likely to lose, but John Winston Howard, 75 now, was the star.

"Over here," cried teenagers and shop assistants, most of them brandishing smart phones already set for selfies. Howard did his best to usher Napthine into the picture, and local Liberal MP for Mitcham Dee Ryall, too, declaring they were the ones shoppers should be voting for. Often enough, Napthine and Ryall weren't quick enough, and there was Howard, arms around the selfie seekers, grinning as if he were running for another term himself.

He had brought with him a sharp message, naturally, and he got the chance in front of gathered cameras and microphones in a store named Cotton On. What he wanted voters to cotton on to was simple: Victoria, he declared, under Denis Napthine, was the nation's strongest economy.

Voters, he said, should not risk the alternative, which was a Labor government that would be subservient to left-wing thugs from the CFMEU. He said it again. And again.

And when a reporter naive enough to believe he could trick him, this veteran of the tumult of national politics, into saying he would be "shocked" if the Napthine government was defeated, the old stager stared him down and insisted he would be "disappointed" because of the aforementioned risk to the economy by a party in the thrall of the dangerous CFMEU, and he wouldn't be using any words offered by a reporter, thanks.

And then he plunged back among the shoppers, and it was as if they were his people, at least for the length of a selfie, Denis Napthine trailing behind, witnessing a masterclass.