Letters and files obtained by the Daily Telegraph reveal the key role played by current shadow chancellor Ed Balls in Gordon Brown's attempts to overthrow the then-prime minister.
The reports also allude to a wider group - including current Labour leader Ed Miliband and shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander - preparing the ground for the transition between Mr Blair and Mr Brown, starting within weeks of the 2005 general election. The move was dubbed Project Volvo.
The language of the memos Mr Brown sent Mr Balls and others is startling.
"This is a government not presidency," he wrote in the autumn.
"Restoration of constitution and of trust. Leadership that gets on with the job... Trust depends on proper relationship between executive legislature and civil service, Labour the champion of the constitution... Need to redefine politics from spin/calculation/manoeuvre... No presidentialism."
Later, he wrote to Mr Balls: "If we are to renew Labour, we will have to be as rigorous and brutal as we were in the creation of new Labour."
Mr Brown took to passing on highly confidential notes between Mr Blair and himself to Mr Balls, who was long considered his right-hand man, in the wake of the election.
By February 2006 Mr Blair was seeking to make a deal with Mr Brown to organise an orderly transition.
"You (understandably) want me to go now," Mr Blair wrote.
"You need to be the candidate of continuity and change. The second will be relatively easy to do. A different person is, by its nature, change.
"The first, however, rests on a smooth transition. Critical to that is not merely the absence of disunity in the handover; it is also the visible, clear demonstration that the person who most embodies NL [New Labour], ie: me, is working hand in hand with the successor."
The letter goes on to suggest several policy areas in which Mr Brown can take a front-stage role, including counter-terrorism and democratic renewal - an area he was to sieze on years later during his time in Number Ten.
In return, Mr Blair wanted cooperation on his main policy areas, including NHS reform, education and the 'respect' agenda.
"Whilst I remain PM, the final decision has to be mine; and that cannot provoke a breakdown. I will try, at all costs, to avoid disagreement, but there can't be stalemate if it happens," he warns.
The letter was then passed on to Mr Balls from Mr Brownb's office, with the then-chancellor scribbling the words "shallow", "inconsistent" and "muddled" on it.
A subsequent deal document, proposed by Mr Brown lay out the need for six-month, 12-month and two-year strategic plans, a role for him in future Cabinet reshuffles and his attendance at international meetings.
Mr Brown wrote: "I propose the following: across a wide range of areas you [Brown] are put in charge of future working groups beyond economic policy so that Labour with you leading is seen as party able to meet big challenges of future.
"You [Brown] will however set out with my full support and that of my team, the agenda for beyond 2007 and for the next parliament."
The deal fell apart, apparently because of Mr Blair's irritation with Mr Balls.
While the files mention Mr Miliband, Mr Balls is likely to be worst affected by the story, as it resuscitates the worst aspects of his reputation.
Known as a bruiser in parliament, the shadow chancellor's warm expression while speaking to the media is entirely at odds with the tough, plotting character alluded to in the files.
Reports this morning suggested that Cabinet secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell is set to order a leak inquiry into how his files were made public.
It is understood that the last time Mr Balls saw the handwritten notes they were on his desk at the Department of Education at the time of the general election.
Mr Balls then went on to fight the Labour leadership election, but his association with Mr Brown proved to be his undoing as Ed Miliband, seen by many Blairites as the acceptable face of Mr Brown's coterie, took the leadership.
Labour figures have tried to write off the story - which will continue to be published by the Telegraph as the month progresses - as ancient history, but with Mr Balls taking on an increasingly high profile role in Mr Miliband's party, it will be met with dismay behind closed doors.
A renewed media fixation with the tribal disruptions of New Labour runs against Mr Miliband's attempts to put the period behind him.

Dutch film director Tom Six has made a flick too sick for the Brits.

British censors have refused to classify Six's sequel to his earlier classic, The Human Centipede.

The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) depicts a chap who obsesses over the first Centipede flick and then goes on a rampage, getting his sexual jollies from torturing his naked victims.

Six doubtlessly figured this a recipe for success, but the British Board of Film Classification disagreed. A refusal to classify virtually bans the film.

The sequel is bound to be a tad blue, since the original, which the censors allowed public viewing, depicts a mad scientist who grafts kidnap victims mouth to anus, hence the "centipede" moniker. (Roger Ebert was not tempted to give it a thumbs up: "I am required to award stars to movies I review. This time, I refuse to do it. The star rating system is unsuited to this film. Is the movie good? Is it bad? Does it matter? It is what it is and occupies a world where the stars don't shine.")

Six promised Centipede II would make the original look like "My Little Pony" in comparison.

The mutilation and humiliation inflicted in II involves an in-depth examination of the torturer's sexual fantasies. The trailer boasted the film was "the sickest movie of all time."


The classification board agreed: "There is little attempt to portray any of the victims in the film as anything other than objects to be brutalised, degraded and mutilated for the amusement and arousal of the central character, as well as for the pleasure of the audience."

It's not known how North American movie bureaucrats will react to Centipede II, but the British decision could pressure the MPAA in the U.S. to kibosh the cinematic gem as well. Six said it's North American premiere would occur "some time after summer."

Not surprisingly, Six (we live in an age of apropos names, don't we Anthony Weiner?) is protesting the British decision.

"Apparently, I made an horrific horror film, but shouldn't a good horror film be horrific?" Six opined to Empire magazine. "My dear people it is a f****cking MOVIE. It is all fictional. Not real. It is all make-belief. It is art. Give people their own choice to watch it or not. If people can't handle or like my movies they just don't watch them."

Of course, Six may still get the last laugh. Bans have a tendency to whet the appetites of many a movie-goer who lusts to view a mad scientist getting his jollies from eviscerating his victims. Coming soon to an Internet porn site near you, no doubt.

Ryan Giggs seems to have a habit of trying to stop people spilling the beans.

Having successfully taken out an injunction to prevent alleged lover Imogen Thomas from blabbing about their affair, Giggs is reportedly trying to gag his own brother.

According to The Sun, Giggs has offered his "devastated" brother £250,000 to keep quiet about any more skeletons that might be lurking in his closet.

A source told the paper: "Rhodri is telling people Ryan wants to shut him up. The figure on the table is a quarter of a million.

"Poor Rhodri feels utterly betrayed by Ryan and doesn't know what to do for the best. He's been through hell. He's not exactly rolling in cash, so £250,000 would be very useful."

The Sun claims Rhodri is being represented by an expensive legal team from the same firm that helped Ryan with his injunction.

The insider revealed that Rhodri is "in turmoil" over whether to accept the cash but suggested that he is close to signing a gagging order, despite knowing "where all the bodies are buried".

'Sarah Ferguson enjoyed a childhood which, in retrospect, seems idyllic in its comfort and Englishness,” begins Ingrid Seward’s 1991 biography of Sarah, Duchess of York. Twenty years on, a very different – and infinitely more lurid – version of that childhood is emerging from a series of television interviews that the Duchess has given to the Oprah Winfrey Network in the US. Unloved, beaten and callously treated by both her parents, not to mention the emotionally inept Royal family, it is little wonder, she says, that she now feels “ludicrous”, “pointless” and “worthless”.
We already know that the Duchess loves nothing better than a tearful confessional, especially when it brings her an audience of millions and an appearance fee of, in this instance, reportedly £200,000. Over the past 20 years she has repeatedly, and publicly, wallowed in regret over lovers, debts and misjudgments. Only last year, she had to grovel on screen after she was filmed, fuelled by red wine, attempting to sell access to her ex-husband for £500,000. But the first programme in Finding Sarah, a six-part series, to be broadcast on Sunday, breaks new ground.
Most startling of the latest revelations is that her mother was incapable of showing love, and beat her as a toddler. “When she used to hit me because I didn’t sit on my potty or wouldn’t eat, a little vein would come up on the centre of my head near my red hair,” a preview reveals. Her mother called it the “sign of the devil” and would lay about her daughter saying, “I’m going to beat that devil out!”
Sorry, what year are we in? This satanic talk takes us back to the bad old days of the Rochdale and Orkney child abuse scandals in 1990 and 1991, when hordes of children were taken from their families after what turned out to be wild allegations prompted by overzealous social workers and therapists. But now, courtesy of the world’s most garrulous rogue royal, we are already revisiting the minefield of recovered memory and its destructive sibling, false memory syndrome.
“People think false memory syndrome is done and dusted, but it has never gone away,” according to Madeline Greenhalgh, director of the British False Memory Society. “In the early-Nineties, we were getting 250 cases a year; now we get around 50 cases a year. Each one has terrible effects on a whole family with grandparents no longer allowed to see their grandchildren and siblings torn apart.

“The cases we are currently seeing often involve hypnotherapists, who are unregulated, unlike psychologists and psychiatrists who have guidelines on recovered memory. What happens is that people buy a course of hypnosis for something like an eating problem or smoking. The therapists want to find explanations for what is wrong with their lives so they push them further and further back into their childhoods, and therapists who believe in suppressed trauma are likely to find it.”
No such catalyst need be involved in the Duchess of York’s devastating memories. To justify the huge payment she has received, she must provide headline-grabbing material. Lights, cameras, confessions, are the order of the day even though she has more chance of finding Nemo than finding Sarah through the public humiliation of being grilled by Dr Phil McGraw, Oprah’s favourite psychologist – famous for bursting into hospital to interview Britney Spears – and financial expert, Suze Orman. But real-life agony is guaranteed from the Duchess whose life has been not so much a car crash as one long pile-up since 1992 when, while still married, she was photographed having her toes sucked by financial adviser, John Bryan.
“No wonder I am so flawed,” she concludes on Oprah, having described the sufferings she endured at the hands of her parents. As well as accusing her mother of violence, she describes how her father, Major Ronald Ferguson, heartlessly sold her pony immediately after her mother abandoned the family for Hector Barrantes, an Argentine polo player. “Every time I got upset, he would call me a sheep’s ass,” she says, using language that sounds more America 2011 than Hampshire, circa 1970. Red-eyed, she carries on to tell the world that he also told her that she “looked like a clown and to grow up and stop being so silly. So I did. I shut up and never said a word. I cried every night, all the time. I was inconsolable.”
Neither of her parents are alive to defend themselves, but the Duchess’s account leaves her biographer, Ingrid Seward, aghast. “I have a soft spot for her,” she says, “because she had every opportunity to have a wonderful life. Instead, she has dug a hole for herself deeper than the Grand Canyon. Here, she seems to be sensationalising the past.”
Seward interviewed not only the Duchess but also the Ferguson family – mother, father and elder sister, Jane – many times before writing her biography, The Duchess of York. The impression she received was that, until the Ferguson marriage fell apart, Sarah’s childhood had been exceptionally jolly – as the Duchess herself had been when she first met and married the Duke of York. “I remember her insisting on her mother coming to see me in hospital after I’d just had a baby. Susan was charming and clearly loved her children, although she left them because she was in an impossible situation.
“Major Ronald adored Sarah, too. She was this cheeky, bubbly child and terribly brave. But this was a military family in the Sixties and, when children didn’t behave, they got a little smack. She should be glad they gave her boundaries; nowadays we are so wet about being strict. It’s important to judge by the standards of that time.”
Psychologists are more sympathetic to the Duchess’s torment. “You can’t dismiss her account,” says Dorothy Rowe. “Parents have always used beating as a way of venting emotions that have nothing to do with the child. Those children are likely to become depressed, if they are girls, or anti-social if they are boys.”
Nor does the fact that so many details of her memories are implausible destroy her credibility in the eyes of Dr Peter Glaish who advises the British False Memory Society. “The cut-off point for credible childhood memories is generally thought to be three years old and she was probably two when she used the potty. Some of her memories may indeed be erroneous, but that doesn’t mean none of it is true. We assemble memories over time, putting them in an order which makes sense. ”
Even the “devil” talk may have some truth in it. Many a parent has called a child such names when they scream and scream in a way that makes them appear possessed by some kind of demon. What is beyond doubt is that the woman who is bearing her soul is deeply troubled. She needs to find Sarah, as well as fund her. But in all this airing of her own difficulties, she may be in danger of forgetting how hard she is making it for her own two children to find the happiness that eludes their mother.

Smiling Harry, 26, who has an on-off romance with Chelsy Davy, 25, replied: “Not for a long time.” He then asked William Titchmarsh, 85: “Who put you up to that?”

Speaking after the meeting, William said: “They’ll shoot me in the morning.” The prince visited the veterans at Royal Hospital Chelsea in West London. Harry and Chelsy’s romance was rekindled at Wills and Kate’s wedding but has since gone cold.

The new reality show from Paris Hilton entitled, The World According to Paris premiered last week, and last night, the second episode aired on Oxygen as well. As fans will recall, Brooke Mueller, Charlie Sheen's ex-wife, is a part of the show, and last night, she appeared on the episode, and it is generating headlines today. Mueller apparently was struggling with addiction, and during one part of the show, she asks Hilton's mother, Kathy Hilton for help in that she feels she needs to return to rehab.

As Radar Online reports, Brooke Mueller was shown on last night's episode as she sat with Kathy Hilton and discussed her addiction that she is struggling with. Mueller explained: "I'm having really bad cravings, really bad urges. I so embarrassed to even tell you this ... I feel like I'm going to do something stupid: I think I need to go back to rehab." She went on to say: "The addiction is just really powerful. I just feel like I'm not strong enough to do this on my own."



Mueller and Sheen have two children together, and they went through a very publicized divorce. Hilton's new show, as stated by the reality star, is one of the most personal shows that she has done in the sense that cameras have caught a lot of footage showing what the star's daily life is like.

What do you think about last night's episode of The World According to Paris? Have you been tuning in to watch Hilton's new show? Are you a fan of Paris Hilton? What do you think about Brooke Mueller's appearances on the show thus far?

Haverhill priest will not serve jail time for stealing thousands of dollars from his church.

Yesterday, Keith LeBlanc admitted to sufficient facts on a charge of larceny. He's accused of taking $83,000 from Saint John the Baptist church to help feed his porn addiction.

LeBlanc was ordered to perform 120 hours of community service and will remain on suspension while the archdiocese conducts its own investigation.

The priest spent $4,000 alone on adult pay-per-view.

REHAB singer Amy Winehouse needs to learn how to say “No! No! No!”

Just four days after checking out of London’s Priory Clinic, after a week of treatment to battle an alcohol addiction, she was back in her local boozer – “flailing drunkenly” around the beer garden.

Wearing tatty tracksuit bottoms and a vest, 27-year-old Amy spent Sunday afternoon with chums necking beer in the Edinboro Castle in her old North London stomping ground of Camden.

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An onlooker tells me: “Amy was a bit of a mess and hadn’t made much effort with her appearance.

“Despite it being a chilly afternoon, she was wearing a tiny vest and drunkenly flailing about, having several very loud, animated – almost shrieking – conversations with a pal.”

Amy, who remains an outpatient of the Priory, is due to play the first of several Eastern European dates in Serbia on June 18.

Ryan Giggs’ aunt has become the latest ‘insider’ to speak out about his alleged affairs with Imogen Thomas and his sister in law Natasha.

Joanna Wilson, 49, was probably torn between her two nephews. One is heartbroken and furious with his brother for bedding his wife and one has his professional and family life in ruins as more and more of his infidelities are made public (and you know there will be more!).

However it seems the relative is giving her support to Rhodri and speaking about Ryan’s indiscretions, Joanna told The Daily Mail:



‘I can’t believe the mess Ryan’s made of his life – I’m totally disgusted by his behaviour.

‘He’s a predator of women, he pursued Natasha and Imogen – he might have a sex addiction who knows.

One thing’s for sure – he can’t keep his trousers up.’

Wilson also revealed that the boys’ mother has been devastated by the recent turn of events, claiming that she is heartbroken over the rift between her sons….who used to be the best of friends. Joanna added:

She said: ‘He’s betrayed his beautiful wife and his beautiful children.

‘I’m sorry to say it about my nephew but he’s a ruined man.

‘Everyone thought he was Mr Nice Guy but not any more. Everyone can see how cold he is the way he’s treated his wife and brother.

‘It’s beyond belief what he’s done – it’s the ultimate betrayal.

‘The whole family is gutted for Rhodri – he is absolutely heartbroken at what Ryan has done.

‘He’s had to break up his marriage because he can’t bear it.

‘The boys were so close growing up and they were the best of friends because there was only a few years between them. Ryan and Rhodri’s mother is totally devastated at what has happened.’

And Wilson doesn’t think Rhodri will ever forgive Ryan, she admitted that he is now starting to worry that his children aren’t actually his own. She continued:

‘Rhodri will never forgive Ryan for this – it’s over for them as brothers.

‘What Ryan did is a million times worse than Wayne Rooney, John Terry and Ashley Cole put together.

‘What Ryan did was against his family – you can’t stoop any lower. If Stacey has got any self respect she will show him the door and take him to the cleaners.

‘To think he was sleeping with his brother’s wife when his baby was just a day old!’

‘Poor Rhodri doesn’t even know if his kids are his own – he must be going through hell.

‘Ryan’s kids are going to grow up knowing what their dad did with their auntie. He’s a terrible role model.