Gordon years: prime minister in waiting
Updated on 26 April 2007
Political editor Gary Gibbon delves in to Gordon Brown's early years, which includes dusted-down footage of his time as a student leader, not seen for 32 years.
Senior Tory strategists say Gordon Brown's politically unsellable - too gloomy to win an election, eerily driven, scary even.
But is that the image or the man and what formed a politician who in two months time will probably be our prime minister?
It is a story of a strict religious upbringing, an accelerated schooling that would propel him into university aged 16 and at its heart, the searing experience of a teenage rugby injury that nearly blinded him and - he fears - still might cost him his sight.
Aged 15, the young Gordon Brown was playing against former pupils from his school. In a ruck, an opponent's boot struck his head, some months later he was diagnosed with detached retinas.
Over two years, he underwent four major operations trying to save his sight. For weeks on end the teenage Gordon Brown would have to lie still, in the dark, for weeks on end. Eventually, a laser surgeon saved some sight in the right eye.
'My father was very rigid, he didn't believe in Sunday newspapers'Gordon Brown's brother, John
His friend Jonathan Wills said: "Anyone who's had that operation knows - a single strenuous thing - like in playing tennis - you could lose your eyesight altogether. That's a terrible thing to live with. "
"His time in hospital - I think he did think really how he would shape things in his life. I think it did made him more reflective, maybe made him more impatient as well."
Most of Gordon Brown's childhood was spent in Kirkculdy, across the Firth from Edinburgh. He was the son of the Church of Scotland minister Rev John Brown.
The reverend's collected sermons show he preached repeatedly of people's rights and responsibilities, of how man's time on earth is short.
"My father was very rigid, he didn't believe in Sunday newspapers, but we managed to persuade him that he should be more worried about Monday newspapers, and he relented."
Aged 10 - the young Gordon Brown was thrust into a fast-track schools experiment run by schools in Fife, along with other bright children he jumped two years ahead of his age group.
Golden boy
At Edinburgh University, he was the golden boy. Despite losing months of study to eye surgery, he achieved one of the top firsts in post war records and aged only 20, he was elected head or rector of the university, a post for centuries reserved for establishment grandees, people who'd already been prime minister
It was a foreshadowing of rows in Whitehall 30 years later, Gordon Brown was accused of trying to do other people's jobs.
Tony Blair might sympathise with the university principal who complained over 30 years ago that the young Gordon Brown was acting like he was in charge of everything.
Away from the student life, there was a dash of glamour in Gordon brown's life. For several years he dated princess Margarita of Romania, friends recall a man who could laugh at himself.
Being rector put Gordon Brown in touch with all sorts of 70's figures. If elected, he'd join Michael Foot as one of Labour's most bookish leaders.
Some friends say the boy from Kirkcaldy was stung by betrayals in Edinburgh student politics - that it was there - before he even arrived in the Westminster bear pit - that he developed a reliance on an inner circle and an obsessive control of information.
He is a driven man shaped by a childhood accident, a religious upbringing, a strong sense of his own abilities.
The Conservatives think Gordon Brown's personality will be his political downfall. In the premiership, even more than any other part of his long apprenticeship, it will be tested in a relentless glare of publicity.
