Bremner, Bird... and Brown?

Chancellor asks Rory for gags

Chancellor Gordon Brown has asked Rory Bremner to write jokes for his speeches.

Even though the impressionist has been a staunch critic of Labour on his Channel 4 show, Brown made an informal approach to see if he was interested.

But Bremner, and his partners in satire John Bird and John Fortune, declined the politician’s advances, saying they were too busy to help.

Bird reveals the approach, which was designed to soften Brown’s dour public image, in an interview with today’s Sunday Times.

He said: ‘It was an informal approach through Rory [so] we never got to meet Gordon Brown.

‘He is meant to be much funnier in private - but then he could hardly be less so.”

However Brown’s aides say the request was not to spice up his political speeches, but his social ones.

One advisor told the newspaper: ‘ Occasionally the chancellor will be invited to do an awards ceremony or something like that where people are looking for a speech full of jokes. He will ask comedians he knows if there are any jokes they know.

‘I did not know he had asked Rory Bremner specifically, but I wouldn’t have thought it was for the Budget speech.’

>> To read the John Bird interview

 

Published: 17 Jul 2005

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