Andrew Rawnsley has some stirring reactions to his treatment by the Friends of Gordo.

[One of] the paradoxes of finding myself nose to nose with Gordon Brown and his attack machine. The revelations about his behaviour in The End of the Party have been denounced by the prime minister as lies and attacked by his anonymous mouthpieces as “malicious falsehoods” along with a fruity variety of other desperate denials. The more they snarled, the more messages and calls I received from senior Labour figures wanting to express their solidarity and telling me to stand firm. Some offered very useful tips about how to cope in a cage fight with No 10.

“Gutter journalism” was the abuse which spat from the mouth of John Prescott, a man whose infidelities include having sex with a junior civil servant in a hotel room while his long-suffering and oblivious wife, Pauline, waited downstairs to have dinner with the treacherous and hypocritical toad. Her recent memoir describes how he slunk back to their home in Hull to confess to his adultery before it became public. His security staff preceded him into the house to dump a bag of his dirty smalls for Pauline to wash. I know which of us is better acquainted with the gutter.

That’s the stuff!