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What Did Four Billys Tell Gordon Brown???

With a General Election looming, Gordon Brown is doubtless keen to win over as many new Labour voters as possible. Too bad the four current Billy Elliots – Dean-Charles Chapman (12 years old), Tom Holland (13), Ollie Gardner (12) and Fox Jackson-Keen (14) – are a tad too young for the ballot box. Yesterday (8 March 2010), they were invited to No. 10 Downing Street to meet the Prime Minister, happily posing for photographs outside the famous black door, walking the corridors of power and conversing in the Cabinet Room with Brown.

They also talked to Margaret Hodge MP, Minister for Culture and Tourism, and then visited next door at No. 11, where they met Chancellor Alistair Darling and Peter Mandelson and were given a tour by the Chancellor’s wife Maggie Darling.

Set during the Miners’ Strikes of the 1980s, Billy Elliot doesn’t pull its political punches, with Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Government taking a bashing. In reference to the Iron Lady in the song “Merry Christmas, Maggie Thatcher”, the cast sings “We all celebrate today/ Cos it’s one day closer to your death” and refer to Michael Heseltine as “Tory Swine”. Perhaps no visits to David Cameron’s headquarters then?



The Billy Elliot boys with Gordon Brown and Alan Grieve.