Surreal as it seemed, the gamble paid off: Angelina Jolie backed the Chancellor to become Prime Minister.

Asked whether Mr Brown should take over from Tony Blair, she replied: “I hope he does have a chance to do more and more good things, and I think he will if he has the chance. So, yes, I would like to see it.”

Jolie was speaking on a Global Campaign for Education conference call from Namibia, where she and her partner, the actor Brad Pitt, are staying in a luxury resort. Mr Brown joined the discussion from the Labour Party office in West Bromwich, where he is on the local election trail. He missed the worst performance by Mr Blair at Prime Minister’s Questions since he took over.

The call was organised to highlight attempts to give 100 million children in the Third World an education. However, it instead attracted an audience from three continents trying to discover whether “Gordon and Angelina” are the new “Jack and Condi”.

At first, the Chancellor appeared to be displaying some degree of emotional intelligence. But soon he reverted to type, lecturing Jolie, Budget style: “We cannot wait for ever but, equally, we must have the ten-year plans, they must be peer reviewed, the World Bank will be involved on this and then, I think, countries will be in a position to make the dispensations.”

Ever the professional, she took no notice.

Mr Brown, a friend of Nelson Mandela, J. K. Rowling and the Latina pop star Shakira, gushed on: “You’ve gone to countries where there is danger and you have had to undergo a huge amount of difficulty yourself in getting your message across.

“You are known in every continent of the world. So we’re very pleased to wish you and Brad well personally with your child but we know you’re continuing this work and thank you for it.”

Jolie replied to “Chancellor Brown” with an Oscar-lite thank-you. “Hearing that means so much to me,” she said. “I have been following your work. I do know that to push this forward must have been a great deal of work for you and the people that you work with, and I know what a huge commitment it is.”

Jolie, who is eight months pregnant, is in the Namibian resort of Burning Shores, where she is staying with Pitt and her two adopted children. It has been reported that she will give her new child a local name.

She denied that her celebrity status overshadowed serious attempts to have a serious debate about education spending.

“I’ve tried to shed light on some good things and use it in a positive way. Do I know that I’m the best person? Well, I hope it would never affect an issue in a negative way and if I thought it would I would remove myself from the situation,” she replied A fortnight ago the Chancellor pledged £8.6 billion over the next decade towards schooling for Third World children, and challenged other countries to follow.

Last summer, at Gleneagles, G8 countries agreed to double aid to Africa, but concrete long-term pledges were slow to emerge until Britain took the lead. Aid agencies estimate that a “fair” amount for education would be about $3.9 billion (£2.2 billion) a year from the United States, $1.5 billion from Japan and $800 million from Germany.

The Chancellor said that other G8 countries would announce their spending after developing countries had annouced their ten-year plans in the coming months, detailing how they would spend the money. However, he did hint that America might offer concessions from its hardline position. “I’ve been encouraged by discussions with Paul Wolfowitz (the head of the World Bank and a close associate of President Bush), who has said he is making the fastrack initiative for education a priority for his personal leadership of the World Bank.

“I believe that by the time we meet in September in Singapore there will be progress in that area.”

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