Come Dine With Me – Celebrity Special, from Gordon Brown's home in North Queensferry.
Gordon Brown: I'd like to welcome you all to my house. Even you, Alex.
Alex Salmond: Is it your fourth or fifth home, Gordon? What's the going rate for bath plugs?
Brown: Ha, ha. Same old sense of humour, Alex, that has won you so many friends.
Sorry about the state of the garden, by the way.
Salmond: It will look a lot better after next June, when you have plenty of free time for gardening, Gordon.
Annabel Goldie (entering room): Oh, here you all are. I was just in the kitchen, giving Sarah a tin of my home-made chocolate crispies. Gordon, dear, can I just say how sorry I was to hear you'd got yourself into a bit of a fankle over some smutty e-mails?
Brown: Now, just a minute…
Goldie: I could never take to e-mail myself. If I want to send a message I use one of those lovely notelets I got as a special offer from the People's Friend, with floral motif and an uplifting quotation. If Mr McBride had used those he might not have been so uncharitable.
Brown: I'm sorry. I take full responsibility. I blame myself and no-one else. It was all my fault. I…
Salmond: Gordon, are you feeling OK?
Iain Gray: The Prime Minister is just practising for a statement he has to make tomorrow.
Brown: Where's Tavish Scott?
Goldie: He's in the kitchen, peeling some extra potatoes – Sarah wasn't sure she had enough. I don't know where folk get the idea the Lib Dems are no use for anything.
Salmond: Gordon, you and I need to talk.
Brown: What about?
Salmond: About the £500m you're planning to filch off the Scottish budget, you traitorous Unionist lickspittle – with respect.
Brown: Oh, very good, Alex. You'll not be offsetting it with Local Income Tax after all, then? I wonder why.
Salmond: All my government needs is borrowing powers, to pull Scotland out of recession. You surely don't disapprove of that – since you're borrowing £351bn yourself over the next two years?
Brown: That is for the prudent fiscal purpose of avoiding any return to boom and bust, but I wouldn't expect a junior economist from the Royal Bank of Scotland to understand such sophisticated issues.
Goldie: Boys! Boys! Stop that childish bickering – or it's up the wooden hill without supper for Gordon and the naughty corner for Alex. (She runs her finger under the rim of the sideboard.) Och, look at that! Manky. I'll have to have a quiet word with Sarah – you need to watch those cleaning women like hawks.
Salmond: Hey, what's this? I've just read the menu: "Peat-smoked Salmon from the Arc of Prosperity… Rack of Lamb à la Glenrothes…" Brown, are you taking the…
Jim Murphy: I must confess, someone in the Scotland Office did that for a laugh. I brought them up in my briefcase.
Brown: That's extremely unhelpful. I deplore such tactics. I'm sorry. I apologise. I take full responsibility.
Salmond: OK, OK. That's enough, Gordon.
Murphy: I'll hold an investigation as soon as I get back to London, Prime Minister, into who slipped those tasteless menus into my briefcase. Like you, I deplore such activities.
Brown: Especially when they are found out.
Murphy: Absolutely. That's what I always say, Prime Minister. I couldn't agree with you more. You know I never liked Tony Blair.
Salmond: Whoops! That did it. What's the matter, Gordon, somebody walk over your grave?
Brown: I barely remember the man! What did he ever do? One day I'm going to have a bigger Faith Foundation than his. What do I care if he has earned £18m since leaving office? I have real talent – I was Rector of Edinburgh University while I was still a student… I didn't just know all about post-neoclassical endogenous growth theory – I played the best air guitar in the history class… I just need an outlet for my talent – they laughed at Susan Boyle until she showed what she could do…
Salmond: No, Gordon, the difference is, they took you seriously until you showed what you could do. Now they're laughing.
Murphy: Prime Minister, do you want me to put in a bid for you to sing a duet with Susan Boyle?
Brown: Yes! Brilliant idea, Jim. I see myself as the poor man's Susan Boyle. For too long the beautiful people – the Tonys, the Baracks – have hogged the stage. It's time for someone like me to come out on top. (Bursts into song) "I dreamed a dream in time gone by…"
Salmond: Bloody hell! I'm dialling the emergency services…
The full article contains 792 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
