The Prime Minister & National Intelligence

‘There is one little-known perk for the occupants of Downing Street, however. It is a tattered Blue Box with a red band, known as "Old Stripey". The material it contains is so confidential that only the prime minister of the day & their principal private secretary are allowed to see it.

For it arrives, most nights of the week, from the Secret Service, & contains details, which can be found nowhere else, of the nation's intelligence reports & its most delectable scandals.

Margaret Thatcher always read the contents of "Old Stripey" first because, as her former private secretary, Lord Armstrong, explained, "it had the juicy stuff in it".’

The Guardian Chris Moncrieff, PA Lobby Corrrespondent 7 June 2001