The story began in a little known blog more than three weeks ago, and whizzed around the internet – with fleeting mentions by some mainstream commentators – before Andrew Marr decided enough was enough, and asked Gordon Brown direct about the state of his health during a live TV interview.
Marr was defending the decision to put the prime minister on the spot amid a welter of criticism from serving and former members of the government, and more than 100 complaints from viewers who felt he had overstepped the mark.
The furore also turned attention on the man who first published the story, the sources he had to support the claims, as well as the journalists who had picked up the story without checking to see whether it was true – and in the face of vigorous private denials from Downing Street.
The source of the rumour that Brown was taking drugs for depression was not a well-known political voice around Westminster; it came from a retired advertising executive called John Ward.
Ward, 61, blogged the theory on his website – Not Born Yesterday – from his home in the south of France after hearing that the prime minister's dietary requirements banned him from Chianti and cheese.
Not concrete proof of anything, he conceded. But Ward explained how this information had led him to write a 2,000-word piece on the issue of Brown's health.
Ward had learned about the diet restrictions, he said, from a senior civil servant whom he met at a drinks party for "the great and the good". The mandarin had, Ward conceded, consumed "a couple of drinks" when he mentioned in passing that the prime minister was forbidden from eating a number of foods, including certain types of red wine, cheese, over-ripe avocados and salami.
Ward said he recognised the food items as those proscribed for people taking monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs), an outdated and rarely used antidepressant which he himself took in the 1980s.
"So when my source quite unconsciously mentioned this list of what he described as quack foods, I said, well what sort of quack foods? I knew the list immediately."
Ward insisted he then asked a number of other "senior players", including a high-ranking Treasury official and another senior government source, who were also "aware of the stories" about Brown's health. "After a certain number of corroborative views one tends to think, somewhere there is a fire behind this smoke," he said.
In his blog, which was posted on 4 September, Ward quoted several of his unnamed sources to support the assertion that the "senior ranks of the civil service" had collaborated in a cover-up over the prime minster's mental health.
Ward accepted he had no hard evidence to support his claims, and admitted he was "gobsmacked" when he watched Marr ask the prime minister during the BBC's Sunday morning politics programme whether he was taking pills.
Ward later told Channel 4 news: "The fact of the matter is I still have no more proof, and I stress proof, than anyone else that Gordon Brown is actually taking antidepressants."
Ward's musings, however, were not restricted to the small number of people who look at his constitutional reform website. They were initially picked up by The First Post, a political website, and the story began to snowball.
Around this time Ward also received a call from a Downing Street official who asked about the identity of his source. "They were obviously trying to narrow down a mole," said Ward.
The story continued to be picked up by a number of blogs, including the popular rightwing blogger Guido Fawkes, Paul Staines. He said he initially "hesitated" to run Ward's story, and did so only after columnists addressed the issue.
Writing in the Telegraph on 8 September, Simon Heffer mentioned in passing that the internet was "awash with rumours about Mr Brown's health, both mental and physical".
Two days later the Independent's Matthew Norman recycled Ward's claims in more depth, claiming that "senior Whitehall bods are reported as noting that [Brown] was recently given a long list of things he absolutely must avoid, and among those are Chianti and cheese".
Norman went on to make the same link with MAOI drugs, the first mainstream journalist to give credence to Ward's theory. Norman admitted he had made the connection between Brown's supposed diet and his medication by "trawling online".
"I think Simon Heffer alerted me to it in a piece he wrote that was much less nasty and specific than mine," he added. "Then I started reading up about it, and there was a civil service memo – quite a high-powered mandarin – noting this rather bizarre and complete list of foods. And there was no other logical explanation whatsoever other than these drugs."
Norman added that Ward's blog sounded "vaguely familiar".
Marr defended his decision to ask Brown whether he was taking "prescription painkillers and pills" to help him get through. "It was a tough question and I clearly thought carefully before asking it. I decided it was a fair question to ask or I wouldn't have asked it."
Marr said he had spoken to the programme editor about the issue beforehand, but nobody higher up the BBC chain of command. A spokesman for the corporation, however, appeared to back the presenter. "Andrew was asking a legitimate question about the health of the leader of the country." The questioning was, the BBC said, within its guidelines.
However, the interview sparked consternation from leading figures at the Labour party conference, led by Lord Mandelson, who told GMTV the rumours were "absolutely ridiculous".
"We have seen out there on the internet, the blogosphere, all these extreme rightwing people trying to put these smears and rumours about, all completely groundless," he said.
Lord Kinnock, the former party leader, joined the chorus from the Labour ranks. Voicing his anger at "poking and prying" questions, Kinnock told Five News: "I abominate them. The BBC is one of the greatest institutions in the world. They demeaned themselves, they cheapened themselves and the judgment of the journalist who asked the question has to be questioned."
Kinnock later said: "People in the BBC know that I am amongst their greatest supporters, an advocate of sustained funding because I think they are incomparably the best broadcasting institution on the planet. The sense of disgust I felt means that I feel desperately let down by a BBC that is becoming red top."
Charles Clarke, the former home secretary, who has been one of Brown's fiercest critics, added: "I think this stuff is quite wrong and I think Andrew Marr was wrong to raise the question in the way he did. I support Gordon in saying his health is not a political issue and he is healthy enough to be prime minister."
