Alastair Campbell

Former Labour party spin doctor. Played by Mark Bazeley in The Queen.

Also broke Mark's nose - or so Mark claimed - after they rowed during the filming of a feature for the Culture Show about Armando Iannucci's The Thick Of It spin-off movie In The Loop.

(In actual fact, Mark had simply hurt his nose through walking into a plate glass window - but this had happened on the same day as the Campbell interview so he decided to use that as the basis for a far more entertaining story. Especially as it occurred on Red Nose Day. To add to his woes, the accident was following a screening of the sentimentality porn-drenched Marley And Me).

Campbell went along with it, writing on his blog that Mark's lying to the public was "in keeping with BBC policy."

Mark was the real winner though, as Campbell had tried to claim that British politicians were nothing like as venal and crass as they were portrayed in In The Loop; days later, the 2009 Parliamentary expenses scandal broke.