A Stakhanovite prime minister might have thought the nation would pay for his bacon rolls when he was toiling on its behalf to steady the world's economy.

Sarah Brown's diary of life in No 10, serialised in the Daily Mail, shows that when her husband was at work, officials asked her to provide breakfast. She refused, saying the prime minister was not technically "at home", and was later bemused to get a bill for 200 breakfasts they had provided.

In an interview before the serialisation, Brown reveals she did not shake the hand of the cabinet secretary, Sir Gus O'Donnell, when she and her husband left No 10. O'Donnell was permanent secretary to the Treasury when Gordon Brown was chancellor and Brownites believe he was the main source for reports of tantrums and bullying by Brown. Sarah Brown said: "Gus and I understand that I still feel some hurt over recent events and hope to make up another day.

"You just have to know you have confidence in everyone that is working there [No 10]. I wasn't sure I felt that with him."

Brown recalls her life inside No 10 as "surreal". She was unable to order groceries online because the company was convinced her requests were a hoax.

When Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, told her son Fraser his Lego men looked like Afghans, Fraser bashed them together yelling: "Kill, kill, kill … dead."

The singer Lily Allen shocked Brown by curtseying to her. Brown said she saw the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, ask Naomi Campbell for her number and that it became the subject of much mirth between her and JK Rowling, also present, later that night in the Downing Street kitchen.

She admitted thinking she should have intervened more. She told the Mail: "When things were going wrong, and I was reading stories about him that simply were not true, I wonder whether I should have got more involved – to say: 'This is just not the case.'

"When I look back on it, maybe the one thing I would have changed about my role is that I would have spoken up more."