It has been revealed that Prime Minister Gordon Brown followed in the footsteps of his predecessor Tony Blair, by filming a sketch with Catherine Tate for Comic Relief, in March - but BBC bosses decided not to show it on the night - because he isn't funny enough.
A spokesman told reporters that they had hoped to keep the embarrassing incident secret, but felt that following Jackie Smith's admission that she wasn't up to the job of Home secretary, it would be in the public interest to come clean. "It is regrettable that we couldn't use Gordon's sketch" he stated "He did try very hard to be funny, and Miss Tate gave him a lot of encouragement, but after 25 takes and not a titter, we had no choice but to scrap the whole thing."
Luckily, Peter Mandelson saved the day, when he agreed to take part in a sketch with Tate's camp character Derek, who is always outraged when people assume he is gay. In a role reversal, reminiscent of Blair's hilarious Lauren impression in 2007, it is Derek who assumes that Mandelson is gay when they meet in a Hampstead Heath toilet.
"He was a natural" a BBC source told reporters. "He had to say 'Gay dear? Me dear? No dear - how very dare you!' and did it perfectly, first time, in one take. If I didn't know better, I'd guess he'd said the line before."
