Written by Colin Pratt

Mr Harold Wilson was only trying to be discreet when he told fellow Yorkshire man Fred Hewitt to “button up” it seems But Fred thought the labour leader meant “shut up”

Yesterday the labour party was at great pains to explain that Mr Wilson really was trying to save 68-year old Fred acute embarrassment. It happened when Mr Hewitt,an insurance broker,from Kippax,near Leeds,got off a plane at London airport with Mr Wilson.

As photographers and sightseers rushed up, jovial Fred said: “Harold these chaps are waiting to talk to me not you” And as he wrote, in a letter in yesterday’s Daily Express: “Imagine my surprise when he came out with ‘button up.’

Last night the labour party’s international secretary Mr Tom McNally said Fred had totally misunderstood a man to man attempt at a cover up job. “Mr Wilson took his remark as the joke it was obviously meant to be and in like good humour advised him to button up …… A helpful suggestion that Mr Hewitt should rearrange his apparel before facing his public.”

Last night Fred replied “if I was a bit exposed the laugh is on me.”