Man with Forked Tongue ?

We do of course apologise in advance should our accusation that Gordon Brown is in fact Hilda Ogden prove to be false - though we reserve the right to remain sceptical. We shall see what light our Freedom of Information request sheds.

In the meantime, in an article shamelessly cribbed from the Times, results of a poll conducted for teletext show 47% of those polled thought Ogden-Brown was a straight talker.

The Home Secretary, John Reid, despite his reputation as a straight-talking tough guy, fared worst out of all three parties in the study...

57% David Davis

54% Sir Menzies Campbell

47% Gordon Brown

47% David Cameron

40% Tony Blair

39% John Prescott

36% John Reid

After examining television interviews with ten leading politicians from the past 16 months, Geoff Beattie, head of psychological sciences at the University of Manchester and the resident psychologist on Big Brother has concluded that Mr Brown is the most straight-talking of his senior Government colleagues.

Professor Beattie said: “The Labour Party seems to be in legacy mode. There are certain statements they want to be remembered for and they are determined to get them out.”

But he warned that voters should not be fooled into thinking that the opposition parties are intrinsically more open or trustworthy.

“There is not some factor that makes them psychologically more straightforward than Labour,” he said. The Labour scores were affected, he added, by “the constraints of government”.

Professor Beattie was horrified at the suggestion that his study showed that the Conservatives were more honest than their rivals. He said: “I wouldn’t for a second say that Conservative politicians are more straight-talking. Once they get a chance to go back into government, I’m quite sure they will be equally evasive.”