Table Top Rage
I read in one of the papers recently that the former Labour leader and Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, was prone to bouts of 'table top' rage.
An adviser to the current Conservative/Lib Dem Government, Oliver Letwin, explained how learned about the tale of the pockmarked desk from the Cabinet Secretary at Downing Street, which he recounted as follows:
“Danny Alexander and I moved into part of No 12 Downing Street, which Brown had turned into his horseshoe-shaped centre of command, behind which there was a little room called the snug, which looked out over Whitehall.
"There was a little mahogany table [where] we sat down to begin work with some civil servants.
"As we worked through the night, I became more and more interested in the fact that this rather beautifully laminated table had a very large number of tiny pock marks on it and I said to the cabinet secretary, 'What are these?'
"He roared with laughter and said, 'Oh this was Mr Brown's snug and he had his pen and he'd get very angry and he'd go like this' (mimicking downward stabbing motions)."
Politics is indeed a strange old business.
