The Beast of Downing Street

The Cabinet Secretary Gus O'Donnel has angrily denied that he had to issue Prime Minister Gordon Brown with a verbal warning, following complaints from Downing Street staff that Brown had savaged several of them during the last full moon. "These claims are absolutely ludicrous," said O'Donnel in a statement released to the press. "I have never had cause to speak to Mr Brown over any such incidents, nor have I received any complaints about his alleged lycanthropy from any civil servants." The extraordinary claims were made in political commentator Andrew Corybungo's new biography of the Prime Minister - Howling Mad. "The fact that Brown carries the curse of the werewolf is an open secret in Westminster," he claims. "Just like Michael Howard's vamprism was, and that David Cameron was constructed by Baron Frankenstein as the perfect Tory. Not to mention the fact that Menzies Campbell was actually a 3,000 year old Egyptian mummy revived by the High Priests of Karnak." According to the book, Downing Street staff live in fear of the full moon, which causes the Premier to transform into a hairy half-man, half-beast. "When it happens, he just flies into uncontrollable rages, tearing up furniture and attacking staff," claims Corybungo. "At least two junior civil servants have had their throats torn out by the beast!"

Whilst Corybungo concedes that his book is based entirely upon the unsubstantiated claims of anonymous sources, none of whom ever actually saw the Prime Minister turn into a werewolf, he stands by the allegations. "It isn't just civil servants who live in terror of the fiend - even cabinet colleagues live in fear of his bestial rage," he says. "After one particularly violent transformation at a cabinet meeting, Chancellor Alistair Darling fled to the Treasury, where he started melting down the silver teaspoons and casting them into bullets!" The book also alleges that, whilst in werewolf form, the Prime Minister once chased Jack Straw down Whitehall, snapping at his heels, after he suspected that the Justice Secretary had been involved in a plot against him. "Most of the time his lycanthropy is kept under control by Ed Balls and Lord Mandelson strapping him into a chair fastened to the floor of a dungeon in the basement of Number Ten every full moon," Corybungo explains. "Either that, or they let him loose on a private estate in Wales where he can savage sheep all night in order to sate his unnatural blood lusts!" Although denied by cabinet colleagues, the story has been given some credence by the revelation that the South Yorkshire Occult Society's supernatural help line had received at least three calls from Downing Street staff enquiring about defences against lycanthropic attacks. "People have every right to feel safe from supernatural attack in their own workplace," said the Society's founder, 'Bishop' John Salford. "I think that it is important people realise this sort of thing isn't just confined to Gothic castles and haunted mansions - it can happen anywhere. But they should also be aware that there is help available for such situations."