Today he is one of the most familiar celebrities in British life, a sporting legend whose mellow Scottish charm as a team captain on A Question of Sport has won new generations of admirers. Even the embarrassing scenes on Celebrity Big Brother a couple of years ago - that poodle business with Rula Lenska! - have largely been forgotten. It is funny to think that, for Gordon Brown, it could all have been so different.

Hard though it may be to believe, today's housewives' favourite was once a brooding, serious-minded student politician. What stopped him going into politics was his enthusiasm for rugby. During his first year as a student at Edinburgh University, he came close to losing the sight in one eye, having been kicked in the head during a rugby match while still at school. But his eye was saved, and from then on his love of the game became all-consuming. By his final year, Gordon Brown was not just captaining the university side, but was being discussed as a future Scotland international.

Brown's sporting triumphs are well known. By his mid-twenties he was already a fixture in the Scottish rugby team and many tipped him as a future captain. But although he was passed over for the job again and again, he never showed the slightest resentment; indeed, whenever the subject came up, he dismissed it with the cheerful good humour that became his trademark. At last, when he was a 30-year-old veteran, he got the job. But even his biggest fans were taken aback by the skill, decisiveness and sheer charisma with which he led the side to the Rugby World Cup final in 1987 and then, famously, Grand Slam glory against England in 1990, when the skipper himself was pushing 40.

What is most impressive, though, is the way in which Brown combined his love of rugby with a huge range of outside interests. He never lost his passion for politics, for example: indeed, there are those who say that, had it not been for Brown's public support, his great friend Robin Cook would never have become Labour leader in 1994.

And Brown worked remarkably well with Cook's successor as PM, Alistair Darling, to get the Olympics to Edinburgh in 2012 - even after the notorious wobble when Darling tried and failed to replace him as the face of the Olympic bid.

For the moment, however, Brown has a rather different priority. For Prudence, as his old rugby mates used to call him, is now the bookies' favourite to win the Strictly Come Dancing crown. Perhaps only one man stands in his way: Channel 5's TV conjuror Anthony Blair. What will the public go for: Brown's rumba, or Blair's quickstep?

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