Brown hits back

Brown states: “OK, he may have mentioned something about that independent BoE thing to me, but I had already thought of it before – I had mentioned it to Sarah: I said, ‘Sarah, I think the Bank of England should be independent’. She thought so too.

Also, other stuff like wars: I thought we should have one. Yeah, alright, he chose the countries – but Iraq was an obvious one; anyone would’ve chosen that. Afghanistan – I’ll hand it to him – I’d never heard of that place before.”

Brown said the final straw in his relationship with Mr Blair went sour when he caught him reading his notes after an in-house quiz at No.10.

“We were having a quiz, about all sorts of things such as, ‘what is the capital of Canada?’, ‘Does William Hague polish his head before Question Time?’, and ‘To cure cancer would you shag Ann Widdecombe?’, when I looked over and saw Tony reading my notes. I have to write with board marker pens because I have a dodgy eye and he really took advantage of that. I confronted him about it and he just kept saying ‘look at me, no look at me, look right at me with your one eye, you blind Scottish twat’ and it was all downhill from there.

Brown concluded with: “I banged Cherrie… Tony didn’t write about that.”