Whitehall Tax Disaster 2008

It stretched credibility when Gordon Brown claimed he woke up to the Arctic Monkeys. But not so much as the claim that Gordon Brown listens to the Bee Gees every day.

Mind you, we've only got a Bee Gee's word for that anyway:

“He listens to our music every day,” Robin Gibb tells The Times today. “He said, ‘Your music is absolutely timeless’. Gordon likes our music and I like Gordon.” Gibb, 58, in whose Miami home Tony Blair stayed last summer, said that Mr Brown liked the songs — which include Stayin’ Alive, Tragedy and How Deep Is Your Love? — “because they talk about human relationships and human experience, and reach out across the decades”.

Expect lame gags about the Prime Minister "Staying Alive" and facing a "Tragedy" and trying to find out how deep the electorate's love is and so on to be getting knocked out in Tory Central command's senior common room within the hour.

Of course, the idea that Brown likes songs about human relationships makes it all sound unlikely - perhaps Robin has re-recorded the songs to feature fewer lines about love and a bit more about the accelerator theory and non-endogenous growth.