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Totally made up rubbish:
“Robin” recalled how Gordon Brown had initially been polite during his visit to his workplace, a lamination workshop, but after an upsetting phone call, “We had just had tea and he threw a tangerine which he had, and it hit the machine, the actual lamination machine, and the actual fruit got stuck in the machine… we had to sort of stop the tour, and he got even more angry and he called the person that gave him the tangerine a ‘citric idiot’
It was a loopy enough tale for (a newspaper) to sound a note of caution – “we’ve got no corroboration from Number 10 on that, so Robin, we take that from you” – but the Sun had no such qualms.
“Gordon Brown came under increasing pressure last night after yet more damaging allegations emerged about his ‘volcanic temper’,” the paper roared on 23 February. “A factory worker claims that during an official visit to his plant the PM hurled a tangerine into a laminating machine after flying into a rage.”
Naturally, where the Sun leads, the Telegraph duly follows, and that paper’s website swiftly gave its readers a full account of the story under the unforgettable headline “Gordon Brown Accused of Throwing a Tangerine.” And the suspicious-sounding “citric idiot” quote? Both papers just quenched it, insisting that the PM had merely referred to the fictional fruit-profferer as “an idiot”
Ah well, if it's in the papers, it must be
(a) true
(b) rubbish
(c) designed to make them millions
Make up your own minds...
Sue x
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I often feel like throwing a tangerine... and it wouldn't be the first time i have chucked something lol...I don't care if GB has got that kind of temper, I mistrust people who are always calm, it either means they are internalising their frustrations...or they haven't the wit to get frustrated in the first place lol.
i suspect GB doesn't suffer fools gladly...i don't either ;)
xx don't believe a word of it anyway lol
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i thrown may a thing myself
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But do we not now secretly wish that *we* had once referred to someone as a "citric idiot"??
If that bit were true, it would be worth all the rest of it.
I can't even imagine having the occasion for calling someone a citric idiot arise, in my life.
No, I lie. When I was in my sickbed last week and finally told the fool No.1 to stop feeding me junk food and get me some *fruit*, and he returned with one apple and some item of dessicated citrus fruit I could not identify (until I cut it open and it turned out to be a quite juicy red grapefruit inside).
"Citric idiot" would have been perfect for that occasion.
Anyhoo ...
http://www.dangerousminds.net/index.php/site/comments/of_gordon_browns_temper_and_a_citric_idiot_robert_poppers_crank_call_punks_/
A prank phone call made by British author and comedian Robert Popper apparently fooled a few of the British dailies, including The Telegraph, The Sun and (sort of) The Financial Times. Popper, who makes crank calls and puts them on his website, called talk radio station LBC and pretended to be a woman who had seen Gordon Brown throw a tangerine into a laminating machine during a temper tantrum. The hoax was reported as true in The Telegraph and The Sun. The Financial Times also published a blog post on their website, stating that the call was probably a hoax and have since issued a follow-up confirming this.
Here’s an abridged version of what happened, written by Popper himself on the BBC Comedy blog:
Last Monday I decided to do one of my silly and—admittedly—childish phone calls under the guise of my Timewaster Letters character, Robin Cooper.
So I switched on LBC (a London talk radio station) where the topic was Gordon Brown’s alleged bad temper. I called up and got through almost instantly. “What do you want to talk about?” asked the LBC operator. Without time to think I replied, “Gordon Brown visited my place of work and lost his temper right in front of me.” Very soon I was on air, explaining how Gordon Brown had toured my workshop - a “lamination factory”—and thrown a tangerine into one of the machines, breaking it, before calling a member of staff a “citric idiot.” It was all I could think of at the time. A load of nonsense. But I was quite proud of the phrase, “citric idiot.”
... Popper goes on to write that only the Financial Times was suspicious of the prank, but added “[...] to The Sun and The Telegraph, I just want to let you know that I have another amazing story of the time David Cameron visited the very same factory, and threw a carton of milk into the very same machine, before calling the very same factory worker a “lactic imbecile.”
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