Brian Cowen delivers the wrong speech

Irish Taoiseach Brian Cowen’s speech at a St Patrick’s Day dinner at the White House on Tuesday proved a somewhat embarrassing affair. Cowen advanced to the podium and started reading from the teleprompter. "We begin by welcoming today a strong friend of the United States," the Irishman began and continued in that vein, zombie-like, for about 20 seconds before cottoning on to the fact that he was actually reading the President’s speech, which Barack Obama had just given and which had been accidentally left on the teleprompter.

Suddenly aware of his error, Cowan (pictured) looked back at Obama and said: "That's your speech!" Then, instead of ad-libbing his way out of the faux pas, an increasingly flustered Cowen said: "Why don't these things work for me? Who said these things were idiot-proof?"

Obama, now known as the ‘teleprompter king’ due to his reliance on the device, made light of the matter when he returned to the podium. "First, I'd like to say thank you to President Obama!" he began, to laughter.

Meanwhile, it has been revealed that the gift Obama gave to Gordon Brown when he visited the White House last month – 25 classic American movies – was also spoiled by a technical glitch.

When the Prime Minister went to watch one of the movies the other night, he found the films only worked in DVD players made in North America and the words "wrong region" came up on his screen. A Downing Street spokesman said he was "confident" that any gift Obama gave Brown would have been "well thought through": well, perhaps not that well thought through.