No 10 lied to BBC to keep me off-air, says Ken Clarke

David and I didnt fall out exactly. There was a constant friction. The worst of it was, some of his aides were briefing that I was going to be sacked all the time."

"I had a great row with them when they told the producer of Question Time that I was ill and they were able to provide a replacement. It never occurred to them that I could ring up the producer. She said: 'I'm told you are ill.' After that, I got even more freelance, he told the Observer.

Mr Clarke warned that the economic recover remains fragile, vulnerable to shocks and lacks a strong productive base necessary to compete.

"It's not firmly enough rooted on a proper balance between manufacturing and a wide range of services and financial services. I mean, we have this mystery of why we can't get productivity to start rising again."

He warned against triumphalism over a bit of cyclical upswing in the economy.

Mr Clarke said he is uncomfortable with personal attacks, as the Tories sharpen their message that Ed Miliband is unfit to be Prime Minister. This is a generational thing. One of the ways in which politics has changed which I don't find very desirable is the celebrity culture. The system gets more and more presidential."

He revealed Margaret Thatcher wanted to go to the American system of healthcare when he was his health secretary.

"I had ferocious rows with her about it. She wanted compulsory insurance, with the state paying the premiums for the less well-off. I thought that was a disaster. The American system is hopeless, dreadful."

In her memoirs, Mrs Thatcher disowned a leaked policy paper proposing education vouchers and medical insurance to provide private healthcare meaning "the end of the National Health Service", saying it was "total nonsense". However, subsequently released Cabinet papers suggests she commissioned and seriously discussed the proposals.

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No 10 lied to BBC to keep me off-air, says Ken Clarke