TV interview: Brown opens his heart to tell of baby daughter he loved and lost

GORDON Brown's very personal interview with TV presenter Piers Morgan is a marked departure from his usual insistence on keeping his family out of politics. With weeks to go before the General Election, he opens up over a host of private issues from the death of his daughter, to his love for his wife and his relationship with Tony Blair.

Gordon on Jennifer Jane:

Q Piers Morgan: "Tell me first about after Jennifer was first born and obviously she was premature and very small but you were very excited, weren't you?"

A Gordon Brown: "We thought everything was fine. She had, she had been born prematurely but I'd been there at the birth. I'd seen this lovely baby. She was certainly getting special, special care in an incubator. But everybody was very positive and optimistic. And when I came out and talked to people it was with a sense that everything was fine. And it only gradually dawned on us. Nobody actually really told us for a week, it just gradually dawned on us that, that something, something was going wrong and she wasn't getting bigger, she wasn't growing and no matter what treatment that was being given to her she, she wasn't able to respond to it. And I could hold her, her hand and I, I could feel that she knew I was there and, and there was nothing that you could see that was, that was actually wrong but she just wasn't growing. And then probably after a week Sarah and I she was in the special, special care. I, I turned to the doctor and I said, 'She's not going to live is she?' And he said, 'No, I don't think so. She's not going to live.'

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"And nobody had said anything about that before but I just sort of sensed that we just couldn't. So we had a weekend where we just knew that she was not going to, not going to survive. And she was baptised and we were with her and I held her as she, as she died.."

He added: "You know she would be nine this year and you know, you think all the time of the first steps, and the first words and the first time you go to school and it's just not been there…this is the happiest time of your life and then suddenly it becomes the most grief stricken time of your life."

Q Piers Morgan: "I remember Sarah too being I mean unbelievably strong."

A Gordon Brown: "Our, partnership is so strong possibly because these events we've had, we've had to respond to together. But I mean Sarah was for a mother having borne a child for, for nine months, having had an emergency operation, producing milk for that child and then to see that child go it's, I mean…my admiration and respect and love for Sarah just grew and grew and grew."

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Q Later Piers asked: "When your second son Fraser was born everything again seemed fine but then he was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis. That must have been a hammer blow to you given what had already happened with Jennifer?"

A Gordon Brown: "I'm afraid what you do is what all parents probably would do now, you, if you've got a computer you go on to the website and say a doctor said it's cystic fibrosis. What is it? And you look at this website which is so pessimistic and says you know, 'Likelihood of years lived very low, no known cure for this disease,' And you feel, What has happened? And then you say, Well, this is a challenge. This is a real challenge."

QPiers Morgan: "Do you ever, do you and Sarah ever feel angry about what's happened?"

AGordon Brown: "We sometimes say well why, why, why, why us? You know, why did this happen to us? But when, when you think about it I mean we, we are able to do things for Fraser and we are able to help someone who's got that condition. So again I feel we've been pretty fortunate in life because although we've had these tragedies we've been given the privilege of having a son even though we lost a daughter and then our second son which nobody thought that that would be possible either. So we, we feel pretty fortunate."

Gordon on Sarah:

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Q Piers Morgan: "Tell me about this plane journey that Sarah was on about where you first move in."

AGordon Brown: "You, you might say love at first flight. I don't know. I don't know."

Q Piers Morgan: "You didn't join the mile high club did you?"

AGordon Brown: "No. We were sitting next to each other watched by all sorts of other people on the flight all the time. Sarah was on this flight and happened to be sitting next to me and I suppose a bore would be someone just talking about yourself. And a gossip you'd be talking about lots of other people. But I just kept asking Sarah questions about herself."

Gordon on the leadership:

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Q Piers Morgan: "But it wouldn't be unfair, would it, to say that you have not harboured a resentment but you have felt throughout this period, you must have always looked back to that time and thought, really it ought to have been you. You were the guy with the experience …"

A Gordon Brown: "There was no deal struck at Granitas. That's been one of the great myths and people have written about it. I'd already agreed with Tony before that, before that, dinner that he would stand for the leadership and I would stay on as the, the shadow chancellor, as the person in, in charge of economic policy. And there's an understanding that at some point Tony would stand down and he would support me if when that was the case. And that's where we left it."

Later he added:

"You know, if I felt at certain points there were things that needed to be done soon and, and he disagreed with that then that was a cause of tension. Er, but equally… the relationship between a Chancellor and a Prime Minister incredibly difficult but it's also incredibly difficult even if you are friends."

n Piers Morgan's Life Stories: Gordon Brown, tomorrow at 10.15pm on ITV1.