Blair Tells Brown 'I'm Getting The Friends'

TONY Blair has announced the timetable for the run-up to the declaration of the date by which he will reveal the time of the announcement of the confirmation of his final split from his long-term companion Gordon Brown.

An emotional Blair appealed for privacy over the coming weeks saying the break-up was just "one of those things" and that no one person was to blame, apart from Brown who was "as everyone knows, psychologically flawed".

Blair said the pair had already made a start on dividing the CD collection, but he warned Brown that he was taking all the friends, telling the Chancellor to “back off”.

He said: "Bush was always my friend not Gordon’s, I’ve told everyone they have got to choose, and I know they will all choose me. So I am keeping Berlusconi and Cliff Richard as well.

"If he really wants he can have that guy who runs Canada and General Musharraf."

That departure timetable in full:

May 10: Tell everyone I am leaving, and that it was my choice to go. No, it was.

May 20: Rip up all Gordon’s letters, sobbing gently. How could he do this to me?

May 29: Remove address books from Number 10. Those are MY friends’ phone numbers.

May 30: Remove diary from Number 10. If he wants to meet MY friends let him try and make his own arrangements. They won’t see him, I know.

June 17: Tell George W. about Gordon’s “dark side” and what I went through. Oh yes I may be laughing loud and hearty, but deep inside I am blue.

June 21: Just a few days to go, need to make sure everything is right for a smooth handover to Gordon. “Accidentally” pour coffee into Number 10 computer. Ha, ha, ha.

June 23: Remove curtains, light fittings, light bulbs, door handles, carpets, furniture and paintings. Don’t know why, it will be just like home for Gordon.

June 25: Remember to put stinky prawns inside the curtain rail in the lounge and under the floorboards in the master bedroom.

June 26: Make speech saying I am leaving the country in a safe pair of hands. Tell friends that Gordon is insane.

June 27: Handover. Time to make millions and millions and millions.

Salmond Demands Separate Scottish Eurovision Entry

SNP Leader Alex Salmond has provoked the first constitutional crisis of the new parliament by demanding Scotland have its own entry in the Eurovision song contest.

With just two days to go until the competition in Helsinki, Salmond said Scotland had the right to take an equal place alongside the other singing nations of Europe.

The SNP leader. has proposed his deputy Nicola Sturgeon as Scotland's representative insisting she had the full set of attributes required of a Eurovision winner.

"Nicola is a remarkable performer. She can do the Dana, Johnny Logan, misty-eyed sweetheart thing all day long, but I think that Eurovision has moved on.

"It's time for Scotland to jiggle its crotch in the face of European middle-class complacency."

He added: "The best way to do that is to have Nicola Sturgeon strapped into a leather gimp suit and wailing like a banshee."

Sturgeon's entry is likely to be a 'mash-up' of the 1975 Suzi Quatro classic Your Mama Won't Like Me and Scots Wha Hae.

Friends of Sturgeon say she has an "unusual" singing voice and prefers athletic dance routines. "Put it this way, I wouldn't want to be sitting in the first four rows of the Helsinki Arena," said an SNP source.

The SNP deputy leader has an impressive pedigree in showbusiness competitions having won the Bellahouston Suzi Quatro Look-a-Like title five times since 1997.

Gordon Brown accused Salmond of displaying 'fascist tendencies' and said the British entry, Flying the Flag (For you) by Scooch, was 'the best song he had ever heard'.