One of Gordon Brown's close friends and advisers, Gavyn Davies, will go to court today to evict a group of bongo-playing squatters from his £1 million London home.

"We take as many drugs as we can. We found Tony Blair's number upstairs. We were going to phone him but they cut the phone off after a day," one of the squatters tells the Times. The paper believes the chancellor would be impressed with their prudence over money-saving measures.

"It's a very beautiful house, I like it, though there are too many stairs," said another of the "international" group.