KEY POINTS:
The Labour Party will be hoping United States presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is not getting a little ahead of herself.
In an interview with Newsweek magazine, Mrs Clinton has described Helen Clark as a "former" prime minister of New Zealand.
The comment came during an interview with magazine when Mrs Clinton was asked to tell a joke.
"Here's a good one," she said. "Helen Clark, former prime minister of New Zealand: her opponents have observed that in the event of a nuclear war, the two things that will emerge from the rubble are the cockroaches and Helen Clark."
The Dominion Post reported today that Helen Clark found the anecdote amusing and suggested Mrs Clinton should talk to her husband, former US president Bill Clinton.
"As a current prime minister I spoke with him as a former US president in London only two weeks ago."
Mrs Clinton once said her parents named her after Sir Edmund Hillary. Then it was pointed out to her that she was born more than five years before he climbed Mt Everest.
Mrs Clinton has a phrase for one of her gaffes, saying she "misspoke".
That was after she said she had flown in to Bosnia in 1996 under sniper fire, when she went there with her husband. She spoke about running from the plane to the waiting cars. But when CBS showed news footage of her arrival, there was no evidence of snipers - just pictures of Mrs Clinton strolling from the plane to be greeted in the usual arrival ceremony.
- NZPA
