I'm With Stupid...

Photograph from http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk

First and foremost I'm not making the obvious comment here! No, just that with all the "scandal" in the Labour party over the last couple of weeks (Prescott, Clarke, local election disaster) and with the calls for Tony Blair to name a date for the so-called handover of power, I was thinking about the Tony/Gordon double act more than is usual for me. It occurred to me that I'd always assumed that Gordon Brown (texture like sun) was a lot older than Blair. However, with passing time, Tony's hair greyed, Gordon had a baby and I wondered...so I Googled and found out that he is only a couple of years older than the Prime Minister.

However, during my Google, I found out a nasty, dirty secret about the Chancellor. Wait for it... Whisper it... He has a PhD. His biog is pretty upfront about that but not so much on the subject of said doctorate. Not only that but he also lectured for a while (and the hollow laughs of AUT members across the country ring in my ears, given the current situation here).

Not a huge secret, I'll admit, but I wondered why, unlike certain other Labour MP's (stand up John Reid) he didn't use the title "Dr"? Reverse intellectual snobbery? Perhaps the public don't like their Chancellors (or Prime Ministers in waiting) over-educated?

Mr. Brown, as he prefers to be known, was in fact a precocious boy. He took his 'O' Grades at 14 (about 2 years early) and had his 1st class honours degree in History by the time he was 20. That obviously tired him out as it then took him 10 years to get his doctorate (in history, by the way)! This interesting blog comments on exactly that.

Never a frown with Gordon Brown.