London, Apr. 13 : British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's close aide, Damian McBride, plotted to cripple Tory election hopes with a vile campaign of unfounded and obscene rumours.

McBride, Brown's strategy chief, quit after e-mails detailing his sinister smear plan were leaked.

A furious Conservative party leader, David Cameron, however, demanded a personal apology from Brown, saying that he was championing corruption and sleaze in Downing Street.

McBride, dubbed "McPoison" by his political victims, planned to unleash his campaign of slurs on the Internet in the run-up to the next general election, reports The Sun.

McBride, 34, listed the slurs in e-mails to ex-Labour spin doctor and blogger Derek Draper.

They included four viz. (1) Cameron suffers from an embarrassing medical condition; (2) Shadow Chancellor George Osborne had sex and took drugs with a hooker and that an ex-girlfriend has pictures of him in a bra, knickers and suspenders; (3) That Tory MP Nadine Dorries had a one-night stand with a fellow MP and (4) A secretly gay Tory MP used his position to get publicity for a firm run by his partner.

The existence of these e-mails was revealed by political blogger Paul Staines, who writes the Guido Fawkes website.

Downing Street has tried to dismiss the scandal as an exchange of "juvenile" emails.

A spokesman said: "Neither the Prime Minister, nor anybody else in Downing Street, had knowledge of these emails. "It is the Prime Minister's view there is no place in politics for the dissemination of material of this kind. Mr McBride and Mr Draper took the decision not to publish this." (ANI)