Long wait over for Britain's Brown

LONDON, June 27 (Reuters) The keys to Number 10 Downing Street finally in his hand, Gordon Brown smiles much more now.

He has tailored suits and whiter teeth but Britain's new prime minister still faces a tough task ahead to shed a reputation for seriousness and guide his Labour party to a fourth successive win in the polls.

Finance minister for the last decade, the clergyman's son has a totally different style from his predecessor and long-term friend and rival Tony Blair, the wisecracking, privately educated lawyer.

''Perhaps I will soon be able to talk about things other than financial figures,'' the 56-year-old Scot told Reuters last month. ''I give news about the economy, and so the scope for great humour isn't really there. I can't just start cracking jokes about taxation.'' Brown says he always wanted to be a footballer. But at 16, a sporting injury cost him an eye and put him in hospital for months. He was in danger of going completely blind.

''Every event that you face shapes you,'' he says. ''I just had to stay determined and positive.

''The most important thing in one's life is to be determined when bad things happen to you, and not to let events beat you.'' Brown threw himself into left-wing politics at Edinburgh University, his beliefs shaped by the poverty he saw growing up in Kirkcaldy, a town with a failing linoleum industry.

The Brown Sugars -- miniskirted female fans -- cheered him to his first election victory as university rector. Colleagues remember the student Brown as being intensely driven and he remains a single-minded workaholic.

WORKHORSE Flying into Iraq for the first time in November, Brown kept studying his papers impassively as the military helicopter lurched violently a few metres above the ground.

As the longest-serving Chancellor of the Exchequer in 200 years, Brown has had a greater hand in shaping domestic policy than any other incumbent in living memory.

He held the government's purse strings so tightly that one former top civil servant said he demonstrated ''Stalinist ruthlessness'' towards colleagues over spending plans.

His first act on entering office in 1997 is still regarded as Labour's masterstroke, handing control of interest rates to the Bank of England. He also kept Britain out of the euro.

The British economy has thrived and the IMF repeatedly praises his skilful management.

But government borrowing has risen and the housing boom that has made huge numbers paper millionaires has increased inequality and created a trillion-pound debt mountain.

With decisions often made within a tightly knit coterie, many have criticised Brown's management style. Opponents say he lacks charm and often walks right past them without a word.

Certainly, Brown is more of a bruiser than Blair. He angered fellow G7 finance ministers in 2005 over his determination to get a deal on writing off Africa's debts and likes to portray himself as a staunch defender of British interests in Europe.

Fatherhood, however, has softened him. Brown shed a tear on television last year talking about the death of his daughter, Jennifer Jane, 10 days after her premature birth in 2001.

He and wife Sarah have had two sons since. John in 2003 and Fraser, who has been diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, last year.

Brown's face lights up when he talks about them. ''I need a red cement mixer. I'm going to be in trouble unless I get a red cement mixer,'' he suddenly interjected at dinner recently.

Glasgow-born Brown first entered in parliament in 1983 to share an office with another promising newcomer -- Tony Blair.

The two rapidly rose through the ranks of an opposition party struggling to reinvent itself, with Brown considered the senior member of the partnership.

But when party boss John Smith died in 1994, Labour folklore has it that Brown agreed at a trendy London restaurant to give Blair a clear run for the leadership on the understanding he would take over halfway through a second term in government.

That point came and went, creating the tension and rivalry that has defined British politics for a decade.

Brown is now finally prime minister. But with the Conservatives reinvigorated and an election expected in the next couple of years, the question is for how long.

REUTERS CS KP2305