Gordon Brown, flashier than you might think

Saatchi’s ‘Not flash, just Gordon’ may be clever - but it’s based on a lie, argues william langley

It's hard not to feel sorry for those chaps in the heavy duty hairgel and fluorescent braces, picking the remains of a lunchtime fettuccini from their teeth as they try to think of an advertising slogan to boost the new prime minister's image.

"How about: 'Not colourful, just Brown'?"

Or maybe: 'Plain Brown, without the tone'?"

"Got it! 'Not flash, just Gordon'."

And so Saatchi & Saatchi, the agency which, in a different age and under different ownership, was synonymous with the Conservatives, landed Labour's business. ‘Not flash, just Gordon' is intended to convey the idea that the swirl and dazzle of the Blair years is finally over, and that the new man at Number 10 is a humbler, straighter, less demonstrative proposition.

But is he? Brown has been pulling stunts with the best of them for as long as he has been a politician. The shameless parading of

The shameless parading of Baroness Thatcher ranks with anything Alastair Campbell could dream up

Baroness Thatcher at Downing Street earlier this month ranks with anything Alastair Campbell could have dreamed up, and that was preceded by Gordon's stage-managed abandonment of his summer holiday in Dorset to take personal control of the foot and mouth crisis.

Dorset? Didn't Gordon always take his summer break in Cape Cod? Not any more; not since his image polishers advised him that a tumbledown cottage in Weymouth might play better with the voters.

Wasn't it Gordon who deliberately stole the thunder of Blair's arrival in Downing Street, by announcing, on just his second day as Chancellor, the Bank of England's independence.

As the Times columnist Daniel Finkelstein – a former advisor to John Major and William Hague – says, Gordon Brown "has always been incredibly careful about media coverage, and is at least as obsessed with it as Mr Blair".

You can believe in 'Just Gordon' if you like. But watch out for the brown stuff.