The Budget: A colourful history

Here are some of quirky facts and figures from Britain's long Budget tradition.

THE LONG AND SHORT OF IT

:: The longest continuous Budget speech was four hours 45 minutes by Gladstone in 1853, during which he was fortified by a potent mix of egg and sherry. The previous year Disraeli spoke for five hours, but with a break. He was sustained by glasses of milk.

:: The shortest budget was Disraeli in 1867: 45 minutes. Only one Chancellor has failed to deliver a Budget, Tory Iain Macleod, who died in 1970 shortly after his appointment.

:: Parliamentary reporter Sir Alexander Mackintosh sat through 60 Budgets, from 1881 to 1941. He sighed after that ordeal: "Speeches get shorter as figures get bigger."

CALAMITIES

:: The vast George Ward Hunt arrived at the Commons in 1869 and opened the Budget Box to find, to his consternation, that he had left his speech at home. Hunt, at 21 stone, was the largest Chancellor on record. Disraeli had to reassure Queen Victoria that "he has the sagacity of the elephant as well as its form". Unfortunately he did not have the memory of an elephant.

:: Nigel Lawson had two mishaps as Chancellor. One Budget was suspended because of uproar after the Scottish Nationalists intervened. On another occasion, Lawson stopped in his tracks mid-sentence: this time his staff had put the pages in the wrong order.

:: And Lloyd George's voice ran out of steam after the first three-and-a-half hours of his 1909 People's Budget. He was allowed 30 minutes to refresh his vocal cords. In the first instance this Budget was thrown out by the Lords, after having endured 549 divisions which occupied 90 hours of voting time.

:: Derick Heathcoat-Amory was responsible for one of the best Budget one-liners: "There are three things not worth running for - a bus, a woman or a new economic panacea. If you wait a bit, another one will come along."

INFAMOUS LEAKS:

:: Hugh Dalton leaked key parts of his 1947 budget to John Carvel, a reporter on the old London evening paper, The Star. But the Chancellor under-estimated the speed at which newspapers work. News of a penny on a pint of beer and a tax on dog racing appeared in the paper before Dalton had reached that point in his speech. He resigned the following day, with Prime Minister Clement Attlee calling him "a perfect ass".

:: Jimmy Thomas, a member of a 1936 National Government, was playing golf with a City man, Sir Alfred Butt. With a wink, Thomas said: "Tee up!" The City man took the hint and insured himself at Lloyd's against an increase in the tax on tea. He collected. But Thomas had to resign.

:: Kenneth Clarke's final Budget in November 1996 was leaked almost in its entirety, on the eve of its presentation, to the Daily Mirror. The Mirror refused to publish the contents, conscientiously returning it to the Treasury.