LABOUR MP Elliot Morley was last night confirmed as the first person in the history of the world to forget he had paid off his mortgage.
The former minister admitted he had completely forgotten to stop claiming taxpayers' money for the mortgage he had paid off before forgetting which of his two houses he actually lived in most of the time.
Mortgage slaves across Britain were stunned at the sheer scale of Mr Morley's forgetfulness.
Martin Bishop, from Darlington, said: "Complete strangers will remember where they were and what they were doing when I pay off my mortgage. I fully intend for it to be this generation's Kennedy assassination."
Tom Logan, from Hatfield, said: "I'm going to get Earth Wind and Fire to play Boogie Wonderland so loud it explodes every window within a 12-mile radius while the Red Arrows do a flypast over my house. I will probably have to take out another mortgage but it'll be worth every penny."
And Emma Bradford, from Peterborough, added: "Remember when they attached millions of gigantic fireworks to the Eiffel Tower? I'll make that look like a fucking birthday cake."
Elliot Mortgage said last night: "Gosh, I am terribly forgetful aren't I? Perhaps I should eat more oily fish."
Forgetfulness expert Dr Margaret Gerving said: "As a former agriculture minister he may have spent a bit too much time with farmers. They're always forgetting how rich they are and then claiming thousands of pounds from people much worse off than them."
Mr Morley will today attend a brief ceremony at the London office of the Guinness Book of World Records after which he is expected to hand himself in to the police.