Caterer stuck in loo at PM's VIP dinner

IT was the political dinner of the year - the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown hosted a meal at his home in North Queensferry for First Minister Alex Salmond and the other Scottish party leaders.

But now Mr Brown's wife Sarah has revealed that while the VIPs tucked into roast lamb and salmon, the caterer brought in the for the evening from Edinburgh delicatessen Valvona and Crolla got locked in the loo and could not be freed.

Mrs Brown said: "We lost the caterer half way through the evening. We couldn't work out where she'd gone.

"It turned out she'd gone to the toilet and the lock had broken. It was this important dinner and I spent half the night trying to get the bathroom door open."

She said they had not managed to free the woman until after everyone had left. "When the guests all came out of the dining room you could see they wanted to go to the loo, wash their hands. I was like 'off you go, you can all go home'.

"After they'd gone we had to get a screwdriver out to get the lock off. We had to get it changed properly the next day.

"The lady in the loo was very good but she didn't want to make a noise by banging on the door. It's funny now but at the time it would have been a terrible story."