Did Jowell try to censor David Hare?

Did Tessa Jowell (pictured) attempt to get David Hare to change parts of his new play Gethsemane - a work which is seen as a scathing critique of Tony Blair and New Labour? Today the Daily Mail claims that the Paymaster General approached the playwright because two of the characters bear an uncanny resemblance to her and her estranged husband David Mills.

The Labour minister left Mills, a lawyer, two years ago when he became involved in money-laundering and tax fraud case along with his client the Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. It is easy to see how Jowell could be made uneasy about the play, which opens at the National Theatre on Tuesday. One strand of the story involves a woman Cabinet minister, Home Secretary Meredith Guest, and her husband Jack, an entrepreneur who has a "very daring portfolio" in former Soviet bloc countries.

"Jack's not a crook!" the Home Secretary exclaims, when she thinks she may have given another character the wrong impression about her husband's business interests. The same character says later: "Nobody could look at Meredith's husband and say that he was a model of public probity".

Alec Beasley, who plays a fictional Prime Minister clearly modelled on Tony Blair, observes that the Home Secretary's husband is "quite an embarrassment" and tells her that it would be hard to sustain the prolonged prospect of the Home Secretary's husband appearing "in the dock, in handcuffs, in countries where they don't speak the English language".

So did Jowell contact Hare? The Daily Mail's writer carefully reports the matter thus: "I understand that Ms Jowell talked with a friend about approaching the National Theatre - and the dramatist - to discuss deleting certain scenes. However, all involved assure me that Hare did not change a word." The paper cites no source, but it is written by its well-connected showbusiness reporter Baz Bamingboye.

That said, both Hare and a spokeswoman for the National insisted that there was no approach from Jowell - or from anyone acting on her behalf. And Hare has included a note in the play's programme and in the published play-text that Gethsemane is "pure fiction". Gethsemane opens at a sensitive time for Jowell. Her hubby is facing charges of corruption in two trials in Milan. In one, he is jointly charged with Berlusconi, with whom he is accused of perverting the course of justice. Both men deny the charges. The next hearing involving Mills is due to take place on November 14.