GORDON BROWN may have cooled the special relationship, but there is still an Anglophile close to President George W Bush in the White House.

Dana Perino, the White House press secretary, has brought a whiff of blonde glamour to daily briefings, but she honed her skills in pub quizzes in Lancashire.

Trivia addicts take note: she is married to Peter McMahon, a British businessman who was born in Blackpool; her mother-in-law lives in a village outside Scunthorpe and she is already a “grandmother” of one-year-old twins in Forfar, Scotland.

Perino, 35, is known for her charm, her rapid-fire answers to hostile questions at briefings and her loyalty to her boss – “Once a Bushie, always a Bushie,” she says – but her heart belongs to Britain. “I really appreciate my British connections,” she said.

She met her husband on a flight from Denver, Colorado, and was smitten. They were the last two people to get on the plane. “It gives me chills to think how close I was to not meeting him,” she said. “I couldn’t get him out of my head. I couldn’t eat, sleep or concentrate on work.”

It was her first marriage and McMahon’s second. They moved to Lytham St Annes in the late 1990s to a flat overlooking the Irish Sea for a year, while he worked in nearby Blackburn. “I’d been pretty career-driven, but love won out,” Perino said.

She did not have a job in England, so she bought Henry, a Vizsla puppy, for company. “I don’t know whether you’d call him a champion, but his dad was best of breed at Crufts. I didn’t even know what Crufts was. I just wanted a puppy.”

Perino named him after Henry VIII. “I loved to read English historical fiction, especially the Tudor period,” she said. “I loved quiz night at the pub. I loved the atmosphere. You could take your dog.

“I never knew the answers to any questions but, one time, we huddled at our table and the question was, ‘Who was queen for only nine days?’ I said, ‘Ah, Lady Jane Grey’ in a really loud whisper. The people at the other tables said, ‘Thanks, we didn’t know that’.”

Karl Rove, Bush’s former senior adviser, believes Englishmen have all the luck. “What has Peter got that the average American male like me doesn’t have? An accent? That’s not fair. One of our great American treasures has been taken by the British.”

Rove remains close to Perino, although he left the White House in August. “She has a really sharp mind, fine judgment and a great sense of humour. She is one of the most talented professionals I’ve seen,” he said.

Perino became Bush’s chief spokeswoman in September after the departure of Tony Snow, who suffered a recurrence of colon cancer. Bush’s poll ratings were abysmal at the time, although they have revived a little with the success of the American troop surge in Iraq. “Our ratings still aren’t good. They’re getting better but I don’t think they are going to change much,” she said frankly.

History, she believes, will be kinder to Bush. “I have a saying. This too shall pass and the next story will be worse. I say that tongue in cheek. The president once said popularity is a puff of air; it can be gone in an instant. What matters are principles.”

She credits McMahon, whom Bush calls “the Englishman”, for providing her with the love and support to stay on top of the job. He is 18 years her senior, but is a strikingly physically fit marathon runner.

McMahon’s work in marketing and sales for medical and surgical products often takes him abroad. In Washington he drives Perino to the White House by 6.15am every day and picks her up again in the evening. When he is away, “he makes sure I have the food I like and enough red wine to get me through”.

“It is a stressful job, but it’s a privileged position so I do everything I can to support her,” McMahon said in a telephone call from Abu Dhabi. “Doing the laundry is not rocket science. I probably don’t do more than I would if I was a single man.”

They visit Britain at least once a year to see family and friends. McMahon has two adult children from his first marriage.

His daughter Kelly runs a natural beauty products shop with her husband in Forfar and is the mother of baby twins.

“People ask me, ‘What do they call you?’ ” Perino said. “I say they can call me whatever they want but they don’t even talk yet.” She delights in calling herself a grandmother.

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