Brown enlists blonde to get fighting fit

Gordon Brown, his grasp on power under threat, is evidently becoming stressed. The 57-year-old Prime Minister has signed up a personal trainer to give him Pilates excercises twice a day while he is on holiday by the seaside in Suffolk.

Blonde former actress Millie Dobie, 42, is putting the PM through relaxing sessions before breakfast followed by a 30-minute work-out in the afternoon. She was recommended to Brown by the screenwriter Richard Curtis who has two homes in a village close to Shadingfield Hall, near Southwold, where the PM is staying. Curtis and his partner, Emma Freud, threw a dinner party for him at the start of his holiday and the couple have joined in some his exercise sessions.

Dobie, who is said to resemble the actress Sienna Miller and charges £40-an-hour, has drawn up a tailored programme for Brown and said that his fitness is improving already. (Continued below)

She told the Daily Telegraph: "We don't dive through hoops, we don't leap over trees, he has a very safe and effective programme, something suitable for his age and fitness.

"He is doing very well, I'm very pleased with him. It's a combination of fitness and Pilates.

"I take my job very seriously, I treat him the way I would any other client."