Gordon Brown Denies He Has Health Problems

A spokesman for the BBC said: "Andrew was asking a legitimate question about the health of the leader of the country."

The spokesman refused to be drawn on whether Marr and the editor of The Andrew Marr Show, Barney Jones, consulted executives at the BBC before deciding to ask the prime minister whether he was taking prescription medication.

He said he did not know how many complaints the BBC had received from viewers, if any, guardian.co.uk reports.

"We have seen out there on the Internet, the blogosphere, all these extreme rightwing people trying to put these smears and rumours about, all completely groundless," he said in an interview on GMTV, guardian.co.uk reports.

The polls gave Labour little comfort. A ComRes survey for the Independent newspaper on Monday showed the Conservatives on 38 percent and Labour level with the Liberal Democrats on 23 percent.

Brown indicated he will seek to regain the policy initiative by promising to introduce a law requiring the budget deficit to be halved by 2014.

Brown admitted in the interview he sometimes wondered whether people thought someone else could do a better job as prime minister.

But despite the fact Britain remains in recession -- while France, Germany and Japan have all emerged from it -- Brown said he was in "no doubt" he had taken the right decisions over the financial crisis, AFP reports.