World’s slowest plot begins with a blank email

It is occasionally held that fact is more compelling than fiction. That would seem not to be the case in the failed Hewitt ‘n’ Hoon ‘coup’ against Gordon Brown, which began – inauspiciously – at the leisurely hour of 10.24am, with Geoff Hoon sending Labour MPs a blank email. Was it code? The internet equivalent of invisible ink? Would you have to wear special glasses to read this highly secret communique? Sadly not. Perhaps Mr Hoon had skipped his morning cappuccino, because an apology for said empty email followed half an hour later. What did the apology say? Was it ‘oops, sorry about that guys – bit of a fuzz-head this morning. Real thing’ll be along in a minute. Worth the wait I promise.’

(It was actually this: “Apologies for sending a blank email earlier: it was obviously send [sic] in error! Mary Jo Bishop, Parliamentary Assistant, Geoff Hoon MP.”)

It would be another 90 minutes before the full email found its way to all Labour MPs. Thank heaven that Britain produces the odd decent political thriller, as the real thing can be all too reminiscent of bad farce.

Large Hadron Collider ‘shrinks economy’

Suspicions that the Large Hadron Collider had created a black hole in the British economy were confirmed today, when the financial mass shrunk by a further 0.4 per cent. The economy, 208, has been steadily shrinking since the device began its nefarious operation from CERN’s underground lair in Geneva last year, and reports suggest that its plans are close to fruition.

‘The Large Hadron Collider plans to wreck our economy with its black holes,’ thundered Prime Minister Gordon Brown. ‘But I say we shall stand firm, and slay this mechanical devil.’

Reports of military action against the LHC are thought to be wide of the mark, but elements of the British fleet have repositioned themselves to be within striking distance of Switzerland, in what is described by the Ministry of Defence to ‘a series of planned training exercises in which deadly nuclear missiles may be launched at a target not yet identified’.

Last month, the black hole was also alleged to have claimed British finances. Hooks have been lowered into the deathly expanse, but the finances are not expected to be found until at least 2025.

Cats ‘to benefit’ from asset sales

Some of the government assets put up for sale by Gordon Brown have been snapped up by a lottery winner from Southsea, for slightly under 15 pence. Mrs Doris Goodchild, 86, plans to transform the government’s network of Tote betting shops into a chain of cat sanctuaries.

‘Me ‘usband was a terrible gambler,’ she commented. ‘Awful ‘e was. I never had enough money for me cats. Now, thanks to that Mr Brown, they can all have the homes they deserve.’

Mrs Goodchild, who currently lives in a giant shoe, has enlisted Lord Foster to transform the buildings into more cat-friendly dwellings. Prime Minister Gordon Brown called the sale ‘a triumph for British entrepreneurs’ and ‘proof that Britain leads the world in innovation’, although it is the first sale to have resulted in any level of profit for the government. The Channel Tunnel is currently under offer from an elderly woman with a love of guinea pigs, although the European Union is said to object to her interest on grounds of health and safety.

Labour leader reclassified as ‘naughty rabbit’

Labour fired the first shots yesterday of what appears to be a daring re-election strategy. ‘He was a rabbit,’ claimed Lord Mandelson, apparently referring to Prime Minister Gordon Brown. ‘A rabbit who was very naughty and has since gone off to be with his other rabbit friends in Wonderland.’

The description of the holidaying Prime Minister as a ‘naughty rabbit’ has raised eyebrows in Westminster, with Conservative MPs questioning how a rabbit could have landed the country in such a disastrous recession – a recession that European partners such as France and Germany have already climbed out of.

‘The rabbit did the best it could,’ explained Jack Straw, the Secretary of State for Justice. ‘But these times call for change, and change there must be. The year of the rabbit is passing.’

Analysts have speculated on what kind of animal will be brought in to steer the country out of difficulty, with many believing a beast of burden to be most likely, possibly a bovine. Such a move may bring about closer economic ties between Britain and China, by honouring the year of the Ox.

Ex-minister attack by cow just beginning, claim insiders

A tradition long thought dead in the political world was revived at the weekend, as the Labour MP David Blunkett was ceremonially hit by a cow. The tradition, which dates back to the time of the Napoleonic Wars, is thought to have begun as a concession to public opinion after the introduction of income tax during the period.

Mr Blunkett turned 62 at the weekend, placing him three years from retirement, the age at which politicians of the era would be challenged by a bovine to prove their continuing worthiness for public office. The former Home Secretary was said to have been ‘spoiling for a fight’ and had been engaged in a rigorous training regime. The bovine, a Friesian, had been imported from the Bailiwick of Guernsey as tradition dictates:

“Ye challynger shal stannd onn foure legs strong, bryght of udder and eye; she shal hayle from beyond yar sea; and back yarther she shal sayle.”

Political insiders speculate that the tradition – last invoked during the dying days of the Callaghan administration – may have been revived to restore faith in the government after weeks of scandal, and as part of a raft of new measures being introduced by Prime Minister Gordon Brown to reform the electoral system.

Sources close to Parliament suggest that other measures may include the reintroduction of stocks to punish errant ministers, as well as the use of a cherry picker to suspend expenses cheats over Parliament Square – where a supply of tomatoes will be provided for public pelting.

Churchill slips handily into Churchill-shaped hole

Prime Minister Gordon Brown arrived at the White House laden with gifts, but one seemed particularly awkward. The gift of a first edition Winston Churchill biography may seem most generous, but it looks rather tricky when you consider that President Obama recently returned Churchill’s bust from whence it sat in the Oval Office. The Epstein bust was loaned to President Bush from the British government, and has recently been replaced by one of Abraham Lincoln – understandable, in these times of internal trouble.

The whole idea of the ‘special relationship’ becomes a media obsession at time such as this – one only has to look at the front page of the Daily Express. Is it a ‘special relationship’ or a ‘special partnership’, or is it ‘special’ at all? Of course, for the paid readers of such runes, the nuances of the language can be very important. But for the rest of us, frankly, it’s embarrassing – a little bit of dignity goes a long way.

Happily for the rune-watchers, the Churchill book has been given considerable prominence in the study outside the Oval Office. The bust, it is said, now resides in the home of the British ambassador in Washington, DC.

POST-ELECTION: A scene from the Commons, recalling the playground

Cameron and Brown are squabbling over the victorious Obama as if he were the Fonz:

B (or a younger Potsy): ‘We’re cool in the way he’s cool. He wants to be our friend.’
C (or Ralph ‘Malph’): ‘Nah, you suck! He likes us the best.’
B: ‘Loser, loser, loser, loser!’
C: (Holds L-shape silently to his forehead, backed by rows of ginger Tories doing the same. Potsy backs down.)

The Prime Minister’s position may be complicated by his inferred support for Hillary Clinton, and the ‘snub’ by Obama, who reportedly
favoured meeting Tony Blair over his former Chancellor.

MAYORAL 08: Jeremy Vine trips the fantastic future

With an awful lot of airtime and no substantive results to fill it, Jeremy Vine was left prancing around the BBC studio last night, illustrating a string of often interesting polls with an increasingly bizarre set of visual themes. First, we were treated to a string of increasingly less impressive images showing the ‘Beanification’ of Gordon Brown, from an morphed image of the Prime Minister with ‘Iron Joe’ Stalin to that of the gurning, accident-prone Mr Bean. Would Brown achieve ‘the full Rowan Atkinson’ by the end of the night, Vine pondered? (Yes. And here’s another kick in the teeth.)

These, at least, were recognisable cues to anyone who had been following press or broadcast coverage in recent months (especially Private Eye’s superb twin Brown spoofs). Vine pounced from one image to the next in his jeans, before developing another layer of wardrobe for his next skit – involving simulating snow that plunged the studio into the prehistoric era. Before you knew it, computer generated ice mummies of Conservative leaders were trotting across the screen, culminating in David Cameron as ‘politicus electus’ or something similar. How very strange – but it was to get even stranger with a dive into wild west territory shortly after. The London mayoral candidates where paraded as candidates from the Beano, made to scuffle in cartoon fashion. What happened later, we cannot say – suffice to say that anyone who came in from a hard night on the tiles might have thought they’d left The Day Today running on the telly. Politics always has a touch of theatre, but this was a circus. (We won’t even touch on the forced neon oddity of Emily Maitlis’s techno bistro stomping ground – it looked like a club for vampires, and featured some characters of similar pallor.)

Reacting to all these invisible items must be a very odd way to work, rather like making the recent Star Wars movies – all one has to work is the equivalent of two tennis balls on a stick. You suspect that Jeremy Vine would go green with envy, had he seen the astounding touch screen technology employed by CNN’s full throttle, multi-screen Situation Room, in which on-screen maps are manipulated, video is called up and dismissed at will, and the fonts resemble those used on the touch screens in Star Trek: The Next Generation (whoever chose them must be very, very pleased with themselves). What with the cuts to the licence fee, it doesn’t look like Jeremy will be getting one of his own anytime soon.

Let’s hope the BBC’s art department has a few more cartoons up its sleeve – heaven help us when three-dimensional political coverage takes off. Perhaps a cinema should make a night of it, advertise an all-night marathon of local elections, free popcorn and an open bar, as voters drifted in from work to watch the results unfurl on the big screen in glorious three-dee. Smoking pipes, jackets and vigorous debate would be encouraged, while holographic, walking-talking representations of the candidates would stroll the cinema’s floor, meeting, greeting and clinking champagne flutes with whoever would talk to them. The fantastic future is just around the corner…

ELECTION 08: Minority report, as Catholics trump swingles

News Hour sniffs the scent of ‘swing voters’, telling us that a key Democratic primary is on the way, and indeed it is – Pennsylvania kicks off on April 22. At CNN, it’s all about the swing voters, with their 15-minute latest political podcast (‘from the best political team’) featuring lengthy reports on no fewer than two of them. First up it’s the Catholics, weighing in at 70 million strong, or 20
per cent of the electorate.

The religious end has recently been excited by the visit of Pope Benedict XVI, and such was the overshadowing fervour of this trip that Gordon Brown’s journey across the Pond received very little attention whatsoever. One can only imagine that Brown planned it this way, as surely only the most wayward of Downing Street advisers (home of the ‘We don’t do God’ quote) would consider the British premier worthy of more notice than his Papal lordship. It is still Brown’s Mekon-like appearance on American Idol that looms largest in the mind, that and the image of him shuffling solo across the set of Good Morning America.

Still, even Catholics must cower at the might of the single woman – this vocal minority accounts for 26 per cent of the electorate but consistently punch below their weight due to not actually voting. What kind of a swing voting group is that? Presumably this army of American Bridget Joneses have been spending more time in bars than voting booths – before waking up, drunk and angry, demanding their say in the nation’s future. If one were to construct a Top Trumps set of American voting minorities, one could confidently predict the Catholics would outswing the single women (swingles?), although this is further complicated by the fact that some of
these single women might be Catholics, and vice versa. How many lapsed Catholics? Does this account for the fact that, according to CNN, 51 per cent of the Pope’s followers were pro-choice on abortion? Are these real Catholics? Who can say.

For the benefit of these drunken hordes, out of the stars of Sex And The
City, only Sarah Jessica Parker is overtly political – she’s a Democrat,
and her five-year-old son is an avid supporter of Barack Obama.

Media trickies: Brown, Shepherd face twisting in the wind of appearances

Rarely do politicians look natural on television, but Gordon Brown’s appearance on American Idol was a sight to behold. His head catapulted from side to side, his mouth beamingly claiming how wonderful everyone was, before someone flipped the serious switch on the magic word: ‘Africa’. Before long, Brown was pledging £100 million in mosquito nets (the smile surfaced again occasionally) before signing off to an ecstatic Ryan Seacrest in the studio. This came barely a day after the British premier was seen chatting with George Clooney, a meeting about helicopters in Darfur with which the actor seemed most pleased. Unlike many stars, Clooney has credibility when it comes to Darfur, having made a documentary on it with his father – and few people dislike watching Hollywood’s last true star doing anything.

On Idol, the spectre of Brown rolling his head and smiling was inflicted on 17.6 million Americans – one has to wonder, is this not a greater cruelty? Could not the premier have maintained a dignified silence, simply donating £100 million in the name of Mr G Brown, Westminster? But surely the eagle-eyed Seacrest would have twigged – and we would have been subjected to a reluctant admission of amazing generosity from the Prime Minister, a scene worthy of the loathsome Richard Curtis’s Love, Actually. What use is generosity if no-one knows about it, runs the publicist’s adage? (But there are subtler means, as recalled in this episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.) It faintly recalls the heady early days of New Labour and Cool Britannia, when deluded pop musicians quaffed bitter and champagne at No 10, cracking open a new future with merry abandon to the fate of either parties’ credibility.

It is the manner, not the results, which is the problem. Media relations are fraught with difficulty, of course; the star sees a mirror clapping back and slips into a parallel world, where they are right and never wrong, as long as the money keeps coming. Soap star Jack P Shepherd, occasionally seen without the P*, is doing the media rounds as his character on Coronation Street reaches a head. Having previously compared himself to Robert De Niro, and sung with Ocean Colour Scene after clambering onstage, the actor recently remarked that David’s entire trajectory was down to a single calculated look he gave on set, turning the writers on their heels and forcing them to look at the character anew. (It may be true but don’t say it, one imagines soap veterans thinking.) He was on loquacious form on This Morning, impishly implying that his character had a homosexual future and ‘plenty of shower scenes’ while sharing a jail cell with a man named Bubba, forcing soap bosses to issue a retraction. Should this fever escalate, one can only fear for a moody departure, a la David Caruso or Jack Ryder – apparently for great success but actually for points unknown, bridges burning in the breeze behind them. Fingers crossed that, if he says Hollywood beckons, it actually is.

*One should note that this is probably down to mischievous sub-editing – he is Jack P Shepherd to differentiate him from Jack Shepherd, familiar to millions as Cornish detective Wycliffe.

Double down on Brown? No joy as lookalike legwork draws a blank for dour doppelganger

Alison Jackson, the film-maker renowned for making satirical (or often just straight sketch comedy) films with celebrity doubles has run up against a brick wall: apparently there is simple no one baleful enough to double for Gordon Brown’s ‘huge, bovine’ features. Jackson has been searching fruitlessly for six years, and does not appear to be too demanding – her George W. Bush looks like Will Ferrell (or is that the other way around). This will surely reinforce many people’s perceptions that Gordon Brown is simply not part of the human race.

One wonders whether the part could be played by a man with a cow head on – or perhaps even just a cow. It could be a whole new vein of political satire, replacing animals with humans. George Orwell did it in Animal Farm, why shouldn’t Jackson do it with modern politics? Answers on a postcard for equivalent suggestions, please.

Other people whom Jackson is having trouble identifying doppelgangers for include Lily Allen, Gordon Ramsay and Marco Pierre White. Are we to conclude that this triumvirate, too, is outside humanity? Allen is currently with child – could its birth herald the march of an alien boots over our fair planet? Could Ramsay and Pierre White be poisoning our minds through their culinary empires? Perhaps the invasion force is hidden inside Mercury, and is in danger of detection from Messenger. Stay tuned to this station.

If you look like Gordon Brown (if so, we have your number), open castings will be taking place at The Malmaison Hotel in Glasgow from 3pm on January 18, and at The Old Metropolitan Hotel in London from 3pm, January 21.

For the good of the people: Government moves against ‘brown delight’

Chocolate fans could be heard weeping up and down the country as Cadbury announced a hike in prices for its products. Lovers of the brown delight have cried foul, noting that this seems a perverse move in the context of rising profits for the company, after the animal assistance of some nifty ‘gorilla marketing’.

Chocolate insiders blame the hike on the rise of so-called ‘material costs’, but many see this as the final nail in the coffin of childhood. Already, the nation’s children will be raised under the hammer and sickle of comrade Brown. Are their lives not miserable enough?

Recently, Mr Brown’s government announced the introduction of a ‘little red book’ that all children must carry. One can only speculate as to the commandments and socialist teachings it may contain – including a morning hymn to the wonders of collective living, self-flagellation and the wearing of smocks. With the government’s 168-page diktat on curriculum review also rolling into action, regulation haircuts are surely only a whisper away. Meanwhile, children across the country will be reminded of their new favourite chocolate bar, recently returned to us and capable of creating a wistful tear in their parents’ eye – but confectionery will have been priced out of their hands, outlawed under the new order for all but the most well-to-do members of the politburo.

Wailing and nashing of teeth is assured, but the government will be deaf and blind to the people’s needs. Dental costs may fall, and diabetes may be smited, but be certain of this: grim times are ahead.

Get me some respect: K-Fed leaves the hood behind, becomes upstanding family man

One could scarcely have imagined it when he split with Britney Spears, but now Kevin Federline, also known as sometime rapper K-Fed, appears to be the responsible one. And it hasn’t taken much. Indeed, the rise in status can be perceived as almost entirely relative, with a mounting pile of stories that reflect badly on the mother of his children. All you have to do is keep schtum to rise in the public’s perception (just ask Paul McCartney). K-Fed was recently announced to be the seventh most influential man in the U.S., according to men’s magazine Details. It placed him above Iraqi religious figurehead Muqtada al-Sadr, Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and the brains behind YouTube and its pornographic equivalent.

Reputation can be a tentative thing. A year ago, the Bishop of Southwark’s came into question as, after leaving a party at the Irish Embassy, the Rev Butler was reportedly discovered in the back of a car, throwing toys out into the street. When confronted with his actions, he is alleged to have uttered the immortal line: ‘I’m the Bishop of Southwark, it’s what I do.’ Well, of course it is. What else does one do in such a situation? And as a man of the cloth, the required response is clearly amplified.

Headlines such as ‘He Mitre Had A Pew Too Many’ accompanied the Bishop’s appearance with a head injury at church the next day, after a lost evening which resulted in the disappearance of his briefcase, mobile phone, crucifix and memory. It’s a story which bears repeating due to its sheer strangeness (it also bears repeating that the Bishop has always denied he was drunk) and the Times needed no encouragement to do just that, after learning of a pub crawl in Rev Butler’s honour, following his meandering route on the evening. For readers in London’s Hyde Park area with a liking for fudge, fancy dress and becoming ‘tired and devotional’, head here to see if there’s any places left. The group departs on December 8.

Gordon Brown’s reputation has taken a dive in recent weeks, swinging from the Stalin-style characterisation favoured by Private Eye to that of bumbling slapstick icon Mr Bean. So, which is the British Premier more like? (And who would you rather have at a dinner party? Psychopaths can be very charismatic – Hitler was known for his easy charm at soirees, while Mr Bean would wipe out your entire china collection.) When asked by the Evening Standard, Stalin’s biographer Simon Sebag Montefiore was in no doubt that such comparisons were ‘an insult to both’. Ouch.

Gold: Always believe in…

Recent hikes in the price of gold must have Gordon Brown cradling his head in his hands. The former Chancellor masterminded the sale of half of Britain’s gold reserve from 1999, for reasons that some suspected were more political than economic (the latter is rarely well informed by the former). Since then the price has rocketed, and the loss of profit from the sale is estimated at around £3 billion. Still, if he needs it that badly, the Americans have plenty of it laying about, and not always where you’d expect.

New York Times metro reporter Sam Roberts stumbled into an unmarked gold repository while attempting to change some currency. It is (or perhaps now, was) across from the New York Public Library on West 39th Street, with just five security cameras providing a clue to the contents, estimated at around $4 billion in gold bullion. Just about enough to cover that loss. Perhaps this is why Mr Brown has been mending fences by insisting that he is the Americans’ best friend, rather than the French? Probably not. Given the state of the dollar, the U.S. would seem unlikely to unload any bullion at a cut-price rate.