Puppet Government

In a move completely unconnected with boosting sales of her forthcoming memoirs, Cherie Blair has revealed that her husband, the former Prime Minister, has been giving advice to Gordon Brown on how to run the country.

She also claimed that Tony Blair has been telling Mr Brown how to win the next election.

“Tony got the idea from his good friend Vladimir Putin,” Mrs Blair told the Times, which is serialising extracts from her book, In My Own Words. “Basically, it’s a great system of looking like a great statesman for stepping down, but staying in power behind the scenes. You take a dull, lifeless stump of dead wood, carve it into a comical travesty of a human being, take it with you everywhere you go for several years so people get used to its inanimate features - then at the appropriate moment you say your farewells, insert your hand in the appropriate orifice and pull the strings.”

Cherie admitted there were some problems, however, saying that the puppet appeared to have taken on a diabolical life of its own. “The strings have become completely twisted, leading to a series of hideous grimaces and policy disasters. My husband was lucky to extract his arm in one piece. Now this grim-faced homunculus Gordon Brown is lumbering around out of control, wrecking the Labour Party’s chances of winning a fourth term.”

Mrs Blair denied that she had stolen the entire idea of Tony advising Gordon from ITV’s computer-generated satire series Headcases. The Nev Filter likewise denied that it had stolen the Putin puppet idea from the same source.