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25 February 2007
Beckett Reveals all in Bremner Phone Prank
Rory's sting coaxes cabinet MP into free-for-all bitchfest
Equine Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett was forced into some hasty diplomacy today after a spoof phone call from Rory Bremner revealed what she really thinks of her esteemed Cabinet colleagues.
Mrs Beckett was duped by the flame-haired impresario's earnest Scottish brogue for more than four minutes. Believing she was talking to Prime-Minister-in-waiting Gordon Brown, she made a number of unfortunate gaffes.
"Being perfectly honest Gordon, and I wouldn't say this to anyone else." she said, before opining that John Prescott's empire was ineffective and should be "broken up", Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt was "out of her depth", Alan Milburn couldn't "hack" it as party chairman, and Stephen Byers was a "bit of a risk".
Bremner's production company Vera got around a 2005 High Court injunction banning broadcast of the tape by leaking a transcript to The Sunday Times, who printed it verbatim in today's newspaper.
Injunction aside, there may have been other reasons why the media-savvy impressionist was in no hurry to release the tape.
"Reality has a habit of trumping any satirical fantasy," he wrote in the New Statesman last year.
"It's no longer shocking to make politicians look stupid. It's become the norm, and the politicians are more than capable of doing it themselves."
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