The 10 greatest political gaffes?
"She's just a sort of bigoted woman." Seven words that, if they did not lose Gordon Brown the last election, were certainly a nail in the coffin of his career as Prime Minister.
The former Labour leader's remarks about pensioner Gillian Duffy, who had challenged him on immigration while Mr Brown was out meeting the voting public are what many term a 'gaffe'.
Slips of the tongue, moments of unguarded anger or hubris can cause enormous damage to a leader and will often follow them around for months or even years.
As the countdown to the General Election campaign continues, we list the 10 best political gaffes:
1. Brown vs Duffy.
As we've already mentioned this one, let us begin here.
The Prime Minister was out in Rochdale. He was introduced to 65-year-old Gillian Duffy. A Labour supporter who used to work with disabled children, she epitomised the working class voters who were becoming concerned about immigration and asked Mr Brown where people were 'flocking from'.
Mr Brown smiled, complimented her and her family and got in the car. Unfortunately he was still wearing the microphone pinned to him by a Sky News crew. And it was still transmitting.
"That was a disaster...
They should never have put me with that woman. Whose idea was that? It's just ridiculous...
She's just a sort of bigoted woman that said she used to be Labour..."
"I do apologise if I've said anything that has been hurtful," he said later.
2. David Cameron and the value of a loaf of bread.
One of the biggest criticisms of old Etonian David Cameron is that he's out of touch with the British public.
In 2013 he was interviewed on the radio and asked
how much he thought a 'value sliced white loaf' cost. He said: "I don't buy the value sliced loaf, I've got a breadmaker at home which I delight in using.
"But you can buy a loaf in the supermarket for north of a pound."
He was told the price at the time was about 47p.
But when in a hole, keep digging: "I'm trying to get my children to eat granary – and they like my bread."
3. Ed Miliband's bacon sandwich.
Never, ever be photographed eating in public if you are a politician.
Mr Miliband was on a national tour campaigning ahead of the European elections last year. He bought a bacon sandwich from a small trader to try to look normal. But photographers kept snapping away as it quickly became apparent he had no way of tackling the ketchup, grease and gristle with anything approaching elegance.
Oh, and the man who sold it to Mr Miliband preferred the Tories.
4. John Gummer and his burger.
Never work with food. Never work with children. And never do both.
In 1990, as fear over BSE gripped the meat industry, minister John Gummer tried to show everyone beef was safe by offering a burger to his daughter at a boat show in Ipswich.
She wouldn't eat it.
5. George Osborne and his burger.
NEVER work with food. How many more times must we say it?
The Chancellor decided to show how much of a man of the people he was by tweeting a picture of himself pulling an all-nighter. A half eaten burger was in view. We've all been there, right?
Except this was not just any burger. This was a Byron Burger that cost a tenner.
The excuse? McDonald's doesn't deliver. Lame.
6. Neil Kinnock falls in the sea.
Offering reporters a pictorial 'scoop', the Labour leader announced at the 1983 party conference that 'I'll walk out there on the water'.
He and his wife Glenys went for a stroll along the beach in Brighton. For a second they looked like a loved up couple having a laugh and a hug but the tide was coming in pretty quickly so they tried to leg it back up the pebbles. Kinnock fell backwards and Glenys ended up on top of him, the pair utterly soaked.
7. Nick Clegg's apology.
This fresh-faced, likeable man went with David Cameron into Number 10 with liberals and lefties hoping he would curb the right wing elements of the Lib Dems' Tory partners. Then he broke his promise on tuition fees and no-one let him forget it.
In 2012 he made a video apologising for it.
Internet jokers added some music, re-mixed it and turned it into a song which ended up in the charts as the Deputy Prime Minister sang 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so so sorry."
8. Nigel Farage and traffic jams.
The UKIP gaffe machine last year managed to blame his late arrival to the party's Welsh conference on immigrants clogging up the M4. He said his lateness was 'nothing to do with professionalism', adding: "What it does have to do with is a country in which the population is going through the roof, chiefly because of open-door immigration, and the fact the M4 is not as navigable as it used to be."
9. Emily Thornberry's white van.
Labour's shadow attorney general Ms Thornberry tweeted a picture of a house adorned with England flags and a white van on the drive with the caption 'image from Rochester'. We all knew what she meant. She clearly encounters a better class of left-winger in posh Islington, where she lives. She resigned.
10. Boris Johnson on a zip wire.
Dangling pathetically for five minutes and pleading for a ladder, Boris Johnson's publicity stunt for the 2012 Olympics had clearly backfired.
Or has it? He's still being talked of as the next Tory leader. Whether he'll still be as funny with access to the Trident nuclear missile firing codes, we'll have to wait and see.
