I’ve seen a transcript of the Piers Morgan-Gordon Brown interview, which will be on ITV1 at 10.15pm on Sunday. There are genuinely touching moments about the death of Brown’s daughter and his son’s cystic fibrosis. On balance, however, it proves what we already know; that the PM does not emote particularly well. Here are some of the less serious highlights.
Brown: Sarah and I, we’re, we’re a modern love story….
Morgan: Tell me about this plane journey that Sarah was on about where you first move in.
Brown: You, you might say love at first flight. I don’t know. I don’t know.
Morgan: You didn’t join the mile high club did you?
Brown: No.
(re the proposal)
Morgan: Are you on bended knee?
Brown: No.
Morgan: Are you, are you standing face to face, holding hands?
Brown: We’re holding hands, yes.
Morgan: And what were the words?
Brown: Erm
Morgan: (to audience) You want to know, don’t you?
Brown: Well the words, I want to get married soon and we should get married soon please.
Morgan: How many times have you been in love before?
Brown: I loved…
Morgan: Because you were in your late 40s.
Brown: I’d had lots of girlfriends but the person I wanted to marry was Sarah*.
(On drinking as a student)
Morgan: What could you knock (back), in a big night what could you do?
Brown: I don’t know, a few pints of beer but it was only beer.
Morgan: It’s the late 60s, you must have been knocking back…
Brown: Probably, probably half a dozen**.
Morgan: What’s been the best present you weren’t allowed to keep?
Brown: Er, I think the different governments in the Middle East send huge presents. One actually, after a dinner, was a full pig that they actually sent, that had been roasted.***”
* Piers Morgan did not repeat his questions to Nick Clegg in 2008 which prompted the Lib Dem leader to say candidly he had slept with fewer than 30 women.
** In case you’ve forgotten William Hague’s unfortunate boast (in 2000) of drinking up to 14 pints a day as a young delivery boy, here is a reminder.
As Hague recalled it: “You worked so hard you didn’t feel you’d drunk 10 pints by four o’clock, you used to sweat so much. It’s probably horrifying, but we used to do that, then go out in the evening to the pub…I think when you are a teenager you can do that, especially if you are working hard in the heat.”
*** A reader points out that pork is taboo in the Middle East, raising the question of who exactly sent the unfortunate hog to Downing Street.
Jim Pickard
Kiran Stacey