Clinton reveals Blair heart scare details

Fresh doubts over Tony Blair's health will emerge this weekend when a documentary reveals the details of Bill Clinton's claim that the Prime Minister has suffered from a heart condition for years.

The Downing Street Patient, to be screened on BBC2 on Sunday, features Tina Weaver, the Sunday Mirror editor, talking publicly for the first time about her conversation with Mr Clinton. The Sunday Mirror broke the story last year that the former US president had revealed that Mr Blair's heart condition was not a one-off.

In the programme, Ms Weaver describes being at a restaurant in Barcelona, days after the Prime Minister's heart scare last October, when Mr Clinton arrived. She said: "I told him who I was and asked if he had heard if the Prime Minister had had a heart scare. He was very relaxed about it and said yes he had and indeed had spoken to him.

"Then he went on to say he wasn't surprised, it was a condition he knew about and in fact the Prime Minister had told him that he suffered from this condition some years earlier and it was brought on by a combination of too little sleep and too much caffeine."

Mr Blair was asked on Jeremy Vine's BBC Radio 2 programme if he had told Mr Clinton he had a heart condition. Mr Blair said: "No, this is the first time this has ever happened to me. I'm told it is a relatively common thing to have happened to you and it is a relatively minor treatment."

The programme also reveals that Winston Churchill's son-in-law, Christopher Soames, forged Mr Churchill's signature repeatedly after his stroke in 1953.