After a week like that, it’s clear he requires better protection, says our Downing Street insider
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Thank goodness for Keith Richards, a four-legged duckling and Britain's returning hostages. Without them Gordon Brown would have had a torrid week in the British press.
The pensions row was bad enough. Then came news of Brown's decision not to claw back £90m of the EU rebate negotiated by Tony Blair two years ago. On top of that, it was alleged Brown exaggerated claims for his private finance initiatives. Finally, who gets the plum job of BBC chairman but a Brown crony, Sir Michael Lyons.
Thankfully a Rolling Stone who said he snorted his father's ashes mixed with cocaine (note to fans - he later denied it), the discovery of a rare multi-limbed mutation on a New Forest duck farm, and the return of the 15 sailors and marines from Iran ensured Brown did not dominate the headlines.
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For all the talk by the Chancellor that he wants his government to be humbler than Blair's - returning power to civil servants and away from media-obsessed special advisers - it is now obvious he needs a heavyweight news manager, his own Alastair Campbell.
David Cameron is apparently on the hunt for a £140K media strategist for the Tories; Brown should be doing the same. It's arguable that the Blair government only really lost its way when Campbell left No 10.
Unlike Blair, Brown is not a media obsessive and he will be sensitive to any accusation that New Labour's spin culture is continuing under his premiership. But he knows now he can't put his total trust in civil servants, who will step back when media questioning 'goes political'.
The opposition's gloves are off and Brown is the primary target for Conservative spin-doctors. Without a media firewall - and the right man to manage it - Brown could find itself blown from one media-inspired crisis to the next and out of office very quickly. 
FIRST POSTED APRIL 6, 2007
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