"She was a darling - I'm very, very sad, " she told Radio 4's Today programme.
But Mr Darling - who was chancellor between 2007 and 2010 - said the government's own spending plans were unclear and Labour should not reveal its intentions until it hears what Chancellor George Osborne is proposing.
But then the airwaves went eerily quiet and for an hour nothing was heard from the Chancellor Alistair Darling - an old friend of Geoff Hoon - or Home Secretary Alan Johnson - many MPs' preferred replacement.
But the most telling bite followed a clip from her upcoming show, which featured the former Governor-turned-Tea Party darling rock-climbing in her native Alaska.
Built in 1926, the log cabin has original leaded windows, a claw-foot tub, stone fireplace and darling nook-sized bedroom.
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Pinterest, the social network darling du-jour, is loaded with pages and pages (and pages) worshipping all things mini.
He took to the Senate floor to deliver one of the most emotionally overwrought political appearances since 1972 when Senator Ed Muskie -- another darling of the Democratic left -- destroyed his presidential candidacy by weeping while campaigning in New Hampshire.
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NBC's low-rated critical darling 30 Rock garnered a record-setting 22 nominations for a comedy.
She has pretty much carved out a music career single-handedly, becoming something of a darling of the folk-bluegrass-country set.
More than four-fifths of the river water taken from the Murray-Darling basin is used for agriculture.
The unexpected darling of tempo-free statisticians this year is Florida, the No. 3 seed in the South Region.
Mrs Bachmann, a darling of tea-party activists, seems likely to enter the race.
Once the darling of company-issued smartphones, owning nearly a quarter of the marketplace in the U.S., they currently have about a 4% share.
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In 2007, however, the Howard government passed an act that allowed it to muscle in on water management in the Murray-Darling basin, constitutionally a state responsibility.
And since even market-darling Apple (AAPL) has been hit over the last two days, this, along with some of the other weighty issues bears watching going forward.
We focused on 28-year-old Linus Torvalds, a Finn who in 1991 wrote the first version of Linux, operating system software that has become the darling of hard-core computer users.
"One thing that became pretty evident was how many artists really anthropomorphize the skyscraper, " says Michael Darling, co-curator of the exhibition and chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art.
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In an effort to tackle the drought which was parching the rivers and their adjacent wetlands, it took control of the basin's water from the states and gave it to the newly established Murray-Darling Basin Authority.
Here the fund was pretty explicit - the Treasury should buy private bonds to help ease the credit constraints on UK businesses (something Mr Osborne and even Chancellor Darling talked about - but has still not happened).
On the surface, this daring Japanese-made smartphone darling cuts a dangerous figure, assuming a dual identity reinforced by the rigidity of its '80s-esque, hard-lined facial perimeter and the seductive curve of its aluminum back that all but screams contemporary industrial design.
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Paul Kagame (above), the president who has overseen all this, is a darling of the aid-giving world.
Next morning, I stand on Bourke's reconstructed old wharf and look down at the olive-green Darling River.
Unhelpfully for Mr Brown, Alistair Darling, his independent-minded chancellor, stresses the urgency of chipping away at public debt.
The day I visited, the girls had just visited the offices of e-commerce darling Gilt Groupe and were gushing about the experience.
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The new Tesla Model S has been a media darling since the all-electric was revealed to the world at the 2009 Frankfurt Auto Show.
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And the rapid growth has made the company a stock-market darling.
Ahead of the Scottish government's independence referendum - planned for autumn 2014 - Mr Darling went on to say there were positive reasons why the UK should stay as it is.
Bersani could have possibly led his party to a far stronger showing if he had allowed Matteo Renzi, the 38-year-old mayor of Florence and center-left darling to run in his place.
Her previous album, Let It Die, helped solidify her as a darling of the indie-rock scene, but her major label debut is an album that both the critics and the broader public seem to love.
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