Cherie Blair never said "That's a lie", Downing Street insisted. She said "I need to get by." Ah, right. A regrettable misunderstanding, or the lamest attempt at political spin ever?
"That's a lie"... "I need to get by"... well, it might work. But was that they best they could do?
Perhaps she said "I like Magic Pie" after someone asked for her favourite song on Oasis's third album. Or maybe she was getting the orders in for the next day's breakfast. "Poached or fried?" Make mine scrambled, a bit like the messages coming out of No 10 after the alleged comment by the prime minister's wife during Gordon Brown's speech at yesterday's Labour Party conference in Manchester.
Simon Hoggart offers some other alternatives in today's Guardian, including "my mouth is dry" and "will someone swat that fly."
"One always suspects that when press officers look for words such as "by", as in let me "by", instead of the reported "that's a lie", that we're reaching the communications of the desperate," said Channel 4 News's Alex Thomson in the programme's email to viewers yesterday.
If only Edwina Currie had done something similar. She didn't say most eggs were "infected" with salmonella, she said "inspected". And Anne Robinson never described the Welsh as "irritating and annoying", er, well, that's a tough one, even with an online rhyming dictionary.
Bloomberg, the financial news agency that reported Mrs Blair's comments, said today it "stands by" its reporting. At least, we think that's what they said.
