Cameron claims he won Sam from Wire star West

David Cameron, who has described his wife Samantha as his "secret weapon" in the general election campaign, has now claimed that he once battled The Wire star Dominic West for her affections.

Cameron told the Radio Times that West, the Old Etonian who plays heart-throb homicide detective Jimmy McNulty in the acclaimed Baltimore TV show, "tried to go out with Samantha once". He boasted: "He fancied Samantha. I won!"

West, 40, who was two years behind Cameron at Eton, has spoken about his friendship with Samantha Sheffield - as she was then known - but, intriguingly, his story seems to change each time. He recently told an ITV documentary crew that in his youth "we were all in love with Sam" yet in a newspaper interview last year he claimed that it was a friend, Nick, who was smitten with her.

West (pictured inset) has also revealed that he was bemused by the fact that Samantha had chosen to go out with 'Camo'. "None of us could understand what she was doing with this Cameron guy. He was a lovely bloke, but we could never understand what he was doing in the Tory Party. That seemed a bit odd to us."

Yesterday West, who has two children with his partner Caroline Fitzgerald, told the Daily Mail that there had been a "large circle of people who were very enchanted with Samantha" but said it would have been a "waste of time" to try and tempt her away from David Cameron.

Samantha, who is pregnant with the Camerons' fourth child, was "just the same now" as she was then, added West. ·