himself to any timetable. An episode of Dispatches in May 2007, entitled "Gordon Brown: Fit For Office?" reported that Brown felt betrayed after losing support from Peter Mandelson and other friends and that this lack of support, rather than any deal, made him decide not to run for the leadership. An account of the pact between the two politicians was presented in detail in the book of 2001, The Rivals: The Intimate Story of a Political Marriage, written by BBC journalist James Naughtie. The relationship between Blair and Brown from the years 1983 to 1994 – culminating in an in depth dramatisation of the Granita meeting – was the focus of a 2003 made-for-television film directed by Stephen Frears and written by Peter Morgan, based in part upon Naughtie's book. The film, titled The Deal, starred Michael Sheen as Blair and David Morrissey as Brown. A caption in the opening titles (directly inspired – according to Frears – by the identical epigraph at the start of the film of 1969, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) informed viewers that "much of what follows is true". Location In a televised interview with Piers Morgan in February 2010, Brown admitted that he deferred contesting the Labour leadership and that Blair had promised to hand over power to him at a later point, but that the two men later fought bitterly after – from Brown's perspective – Blair failed to keep to his end of the bargain. Brown also stated that the deal had not been made in Granita but had been struck before the men met in the restaurant. In his 2017 book My Life, Our Times, Brown again described the Granita dinner as "a formality" that merely confirmed what the two had previously discussed and agreed. In her autobiography, Cherie Blair writes that the deal took place at a neighbour's home, not at Granita. In an interview with Peter Hennessy on BBC Radio 4, Tony Blair claimed that the agreement had been struck '...in a couple of different places in Edinburgh', claiming that by the time they dined at Granita, minds had been made up as to what was going to happen. See also Kirribilli agreement – a similar pact in Australian politics Premiership of Tony Blair The Deal (2003 film) – a dramatisation of the events References Tony Blair Gordon Brown New Labour 1994 in British politics May 1994 events