EXCLUSIVE: NUMBER TEN DENIES BROWN-ON-MAOIs STORY
Nby remains unconvinced
Odd tale of 'faked' foods list
There was a bit of argey-bargey here at Fort Yesterday during Friday (11.9.09).
During the morning, nby recived a photocopied, letter-headed list purporting to be the 'smoking gun' list of foods forbidden to Gordon Brown. Unsurprisngly, it matched the list of no-noes for patients on MAOIs.
We contacted the Number Ten press office in search of a comment. "We'll come back to you" they said. But they didn't.
Three hours later, we followed up with this email:
'To reiterate: I have been sent a document purporting to show that Gordon Brown should not be served certain foods. This is obviously related to my recent blogs and associated press articles. I am trying to establish genuine provenance clearly, and need your help.
Can you give me one or more of the following asap:
- Your comment upon such a list (to reiterate, no cheese, Chianti, salami, banana skins, overripe avocados et al) in general. And/or
- Your view that the list must be a fake, and if so why. And/or
- A denial that the Prime Minister is or ever has been on MAOIs'
Within five minutes the same senior source rang us back. This person then made the following statement:
"We are convinced the document is a fake because we do not send out any such lists advising people of proscribed foods for the Prime Minister".
This was our reply:
"That's very interesting and thank you, but this document doesn't have your letter-heading on it: it's someone else's".
The source replied after an 'ah' and a pause:
"Well, our position is that the Prime Minister doesn't have any proscribed foods".
We then asked the source to confirm that this represented a denial of Gordon Brown either having a proscribed foods list related to MAOI usage, or indeed taking MAOI antidepressants. The source confirmed both.
To revisit nby's orginal piece of 4.9.09,
'...here we seem to have a man (unless huge cadres of non-colluding senior people are liars) on a rarely used, dangerous drug to control his mental state - and getting close to a stage of serious disablement in relation to his eyesight.'
In short, the Downing Street line as of 4.45 pm yesterday was that huge cadres of senior journalists, civil servants and MPs are lying about their understanding that the Prime Minister is taking heavy-duty antidepressants. Make of that what you will, while bearing in mind the following:
1. The unconscious assumption of the Number Ten press office was that they were denying the existence of an internal document. This is interesting given that no such imputation was made at any time by nby.
2. One wonders why it takes three hours to deny the existence of proscribed Prime Ministerial foods, when the process would at worst have involved talking to, say, Simon Lewis, or the PM, or one of the culinary staff inside Downing Street.
We remain unconvinced about the denial....and continue to investigate the provenance of the document we received.
Meanwhile, the word last night was that the Sunday Times are moving ahead on a piece for this Sunday's edition.
Stay tuned.