John Major with his Chancellor, Kenneth Clarke

That Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have an often turbulent relationship should not really surprise us.

It has always been one of the most delicate and fraught relationships in British politics - that between the occupants of Number 10 and Number 11 Downing Street, the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer. And it has often ended in tears.

The Post-War Chancellors 1945 Hugh Dalton 1947 Sir Stafford Cripps 1950 Hugh Gaitskell 1951 R.A. Butler 1955 Harold Macmillan 1957 Peter Thorneycroft 1958 Derrick Heathcoat-Amory 1960 Selwyn Lloyd 1962 Reginald Maudling

In a Sunday Supplement series for The Westminster Hour in March 2003, the former Conservative Chancellor Kenneth Clarke explored this most crucial pairing of government in 'Him Next Door'. He was in charge of the nation's finances from 1993 to 1997 under John Major.

In the first part, he talks to Lord Lawson about the Conservative post-war Chancellors and two earlier ones, Liberal David Lloyd George and Tory Neville Chamberlain. Nigel Lawson was himself the man in Number 11 from 1983 to 1989 - making him the longest-serving post-war Chancellor. How difficult was it to work with Margaret Thatcher?

Click here to listen to Part One of Him Next Door

In the second part, Kenneth Clarke is in discussion with Denis, now Lord, Healey, Labour's Chancellor in the 1970s. His recollections go back to the Attlee government, elected with a landslide majority in 1945. Up-to-date, he talks about Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

Click here to listen to Part Two of Him Next Door

There are memories of Hugh Dalton, the Labour Chancellor who resigned after divulging budget secrets in the forties; his austere successor, Sir Stafford Cripps and Labour's two Chancellors in the sixties, James Callaghan and Roy Jenkins.

The Post-War Chancellors 1964 James Callaghan 1967 Roy Jenkins 1970 Iain Macleod 1970 Anthony Barber 1974 Denis Healey 1979 Sir Geoffrey Howe 1983 Nigel Lawson 1989 John Major 1990 Norman Lamont 1993 Kenneth Clarke 1997 Gordon Brown

James Callaghan was one of three Chancellors since World War Two to go on to become Prime Minister. That could sometimes be a source of special problems for their Chancellors, having a neighbour in the seat of power who knew what it was like to run the Treasury.

The other two were Harold Macmillan and John Major, among twelve Tory Chancellors in the last half-century. Kenneth Clarke and Nigel Lawson talk about the way they did their jobs and how they dealt with their Prime Ministers.

Producer: Mark Palmer