Why politicians should never be photographed eating

£10 BURGER

Chancellor George Osborne made the unfortunate choice of tweeting this photograph of himself enjoying a burger and chips the night before he delivered the Spending Review.

The Sun newspaper tracked the burger down to the restaurant chain Byron and claimed that it had cost him almost £10, somewhat deflating the 'man of the people' image.

Watch: Osborne defends burger: 'McDonald's doesn't deliver'

DAVID'S BANANA

Former Foreign Secretary David Miliband never lived down the image of his arrival at the 2008 Labour conference with banana in hand.

Late the same year, bananas were served at the Conservative conference with stickers bearing Miliband's face.

MAD COW BURGER

At the height of the mad cow disease in 1990, agriculture minister John Gummer sought to reassure the British public by feeding his four-year-old daughter Cordelia a beef burger.

It was later claimed that the photograph had been a fit-up and the hamburger had actually been bitten by a member of his staff.

PASTYGATE

In March 2012, the Prime Minister confidently recalled that the last pasty he ate was from the West Cornwall Pasty Company at Leeds train station.

Unfortunately, it soon emerged that the branch in question had closed down in 2007 and the pasty-eating might not have happened on Yorkshire at all.

There was at least photographic evidence of him consuming a pasty in the village of Woodstock in his own constituency of Oxfordshire on the 2010 campaign trail.