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THE impressionist Rory Bremner fooled Margaret Beckett, the foreign secretary, into thinking he was chancellor Gordon Brown in a spoof call that led her to make embarrassing comments about senior colleagues.

In a taped conversation lasting more than four minutes Beckett appeared completely taken in by Bremner’s mimicry and discussed with “Brown” details of a forthcoming cabinet reshuffle.

The tape, which has been heard by The Sunday Times, was made in 2005 but has never been aired for legal reasons. In the conversation Beckett said or implied that:

- John Prescott’s empire was ineffective and should be broken up

- Patricia Hewitt was “out of her depth”

- Alan Milburn couldn’t “hack” it as party chairman

- Stephen Byers was a “bit of a risk”

The production company Vera, which makes Bremner’s television programme, has kept the tape locked in a safe in its office since it was recorded. However, yesterday Bremner admitted he had made the call and said: “I’d really love to broadcast it.”

It was the day before the 2005 election when he picked up the phone, put on his best Gordon Brown accent and called Beckett. As one of Labour’s longest serving cabinet ministers, she knew Brown, his voice and vocal tics well; but she appears to have no idea the man on the end of the line was not the chancellor.

The conversation begins with Bremner, speaking in Brown’s Scottish burr, saying: “Hi Margaret? Hi, it’s Gordon.”

Beckett, who at the time was secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs, replies: “All right Gordon, what can I do for you?”

“Brown” softens her up with some general talk about how election canvassing is going. He then asks Beckett if she had “spoken to Tony about next week”.

“Brown” makes it clear that he is talking about Blair conducting a cabinet re-shuffle after the expected election victory: “He’s going to get Alan [Milburn] back in and Stephen [Byers], and I don’t know how you feel about that.”

Both Milburn and Byers are Blairites and Beckett’s response to “Brown” displays a politician’s talent for toadying and backstabbing at the same time.

She replies: “Being perfectly honest Gordon, and I wouldn’t say this to anyone else, I mean I think Stephen’s a bit of a risk at the moment.”

Later she says of Milburn, who had been made chairman of the party and put in charge of the election camapign: “I haven’t really felt he’s hacked it as chairman. I don’t know what you feel, but I felt .... I think it just didn’t work.”

It is clear that Beckett believed that the chancellor, even two years ago, had a powerful say in choosing the cabinet. As the taped conversation progresses, she bigs herself up in the hope of staying in her current ministerial job.

“I would be happy to stay where I am, not least because, I mean, we are right in he middle of the sugar negotiations, which everbody is expecting me to chair...” she says. “There’s a huge amount coming up in the next six months or so, which, you know, as I say, all the rest of Europe is sort of confidently looking and saying literally, you know, we’re leaving that to Margaret.”

Last year Beckett, to the surprise of many, was made foreign secretary; she is reputed to have responded to the news with the words “Oh f***”.

On the tape ‘Brown’ then asks Beckett where she thought there were weaknesses in the cabinet. “Well, I’m just mentally running over in my mind,” she replies. “I don’t know where he’s [Blair] going to put David [Blunkett, who had lost his post as Home Secretary five months earlier]. “I mean, a lot depends on how much John [Prescott] wants to hang on to.”

Beckett gently slides the knife into Prescott, whose sprawling department - grandly entitled office of the deputy prime minister - was largely seen as ineffectual.

Beckett continues: “I mean you could create something useful without taking everything away from John. You could do something a bit different with that as a portfolio.”

For good measure she has a dig at another colleague, adding: “You know, DTI is always, well. No disrespect to Patricia [Hewitt], but DTI is always a bit of a handful.”

‘Brown’ then interjects; “I think she’s a bit out of her depth there actually.”

Beckett responds: “Yeah. That’s what a lot of other people say to me.”

They then move on to discuss Charles Clarke, who at the time was home secretary. Beckett said that “she assumed the two of you [Blair and Brown] will want to leave him where he is. If you wanted to move him it would look like very much of a repudiation.” Clarke had only been in the post a few months.

When the conversation draws to a close, ‘Brown’ says: “OK, OK, I’m going to have to go, if you want to call me I’ll be in north Queensferry tonight.”

Beckett replies: “Well if you want me, you know where I am. Nice to talk to you Gordon.”

The fooling of a cabinet minister and the disclosure of the tape are likely to add to tensions between the government and Channel 4. The regulator OfCom is conducting a major review of the channel.

Yesterday Bremner admitted that he had also impersonated Brown while phoning Peter Hain, another cabinet minister. “But I’m pretty sure he worked out very quickly that something was up,” said Bremner, whose latest series begins next Saturday on C4. “So I put the phone down.”

When John Major was prime minister in the mid-1990s Bremner also tried to dupe three Tory MPs. He rang Nicholas Winterton, Richard Body and John Carlisle, pretending to be Major worrying about the way they were plotting against him.

“It was something like ‘Major’ asking them “what’s all this going on behind my back,” said Bremner.

Michael Grade, then chief executive of C4, got to hear about it and the recordings were never aired.

Bremner defended phoning Beckett. “It was a case of what I like to call ‘extreme research’,” he said. Geoff Atkinson, who produces Bremner, Bird and Fortune, said: “It was Rory road-testing Gordon.”

His new series could be the last time that Bremner impersonates Blair, who will no longer be prime minister by the time of the next series.

“Sadly we also seem to have entered an era of grim, machine-like politicians such as John Hutton,” said Bremner. And what of David Cameron? “Well he’s Blair but with Peter Mandelson’s accent,” said Bremner.

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