'This is Gordon Brown. Now, about my expenses…'

The Telegraph editor-in-chief, Will Lewis, has been telling friends of the extraordinary night his newspaper went to press with the first of its revelations.

In the middle of the evening he gets a call from the prime minister, Gordon Brown. Mr Brown is well aware of what is about to happen. His call is not a short one – it lasts a full half-hour.

Indeed, in the course of it Mr Lewis suggests to him he might like to get a press officer to call, to leave him free to do something else. But Mr Brown says he wants to handle the matter himself.

The prime minister spent the entire half-hour discussing his own personal expenses. At no point did he ever raise the general issues involved, nor indeed urge Mr Lewis not to publish.

He only wanted to discuss the fine print of his own expenses and the matter of sharing a cleaning lady with his brother.