Lord Mandy the dandy

Say what you like about Peter Mandelson, but things happen to him a lot. His life is vivid with incident, hectic, mouvementé. He bustles here, he whizzes there, furrowing his noble brow and setting his mouth in that reluctant, razor-blade smile. He is Mr Busy. He recalls that TV commercial in which a woman executive strides along a corridor, accompanied by an entourage of fawning acolytes, while a voice intones: "I move with the times... In this fast-changing world, I make decisions..."

What a busy couple of weeks he's had. In short order, he gives up his expensive job as an EU Commissioner like that, without having to work any notice, returns to England into a media firestorm, starts a new job straight away as Business Secretary, joining the Cabinet without having to go through any time-wasting niceties about being elected to Parliament. The papers are full of his indiscreet holiday conversation in a Corfu taverna with the shadow Chancellor, which allegedly "dripped vitriol" all over Gordon.

Nine days after the World Economic Forum in Tianjin, at which he drank a glass of milk to show his support for the Chinese dairy industry, he is stricken with sudden pain in the major organs and diagnosed with a kidney stone. He has it whipped out, but there's no time to convalesce, because he's also been made a peer of the realm, and must stride (a little painfully) to the Lords to be invested...

It's enough to make your head spin. Luckily, Mr Mandelson is a leading expert on all things spinning, and is never at a loss. Just look at his wardrobe, which suggests a man at home in a dozen worlds, skilfully juggling identities. It follows basic rules. Mr Mandelson is very fond of blue. He always walks with one hand in a trouser pocket. He wears ties. And he manages several distinctive looks in a matter of days.

His first public appearance, on Friday 3 October, the day his new appointment was announced, saw him kitted out in a dark blue suit with funky, shark-fin lapels, a blue tie, white shirt – and a crimson V-neck sweater. Yikes! How could such a sophisticate make such a grotesque fashion blunder? Has he acquired a Jewish mother who made him put on something warm as he left the house?

Next day, Saturday, things got weird. Early in the morning, Mandelson was snapped on a London street wearing a zip-fronted grey hoodie and crumpled off-grey sweatpants (with prominent fly-zip). He was talking urgently into a mobile phone, held two-handed, like a skater-boy off to hang with his mates and listen to Avril Lavigne.

That afternoon, he was transformed – photographed on the steps of a shrubs-in-tubs establishment in a shapeless (M&S? Primark? Zara Men?) blue wool sports jacket and non-matching charcoal strides. His brown hair was plastered across his brow, his tie diagonal orange stripes. It was the image of an ageing clubman. In less than half a day, Mr Mandelson had gone from seeming 12 to looking at least 71.

On Sunday 6 October, he spent some time in (I'm guessing) a green theatre-gown in a London hospital, having his kidney stone extracted. Veterans of the stone insist that, with the possible exception of haemorrhoidal surgery, it's the most painful post-operative condition around. Nonetheless, it was a smiley, sprightly Peter who strode along the street near his Regent's Park home on Monday, decked out in a two-tier Barbour jacket, open-necked denim shirt and cream chinos, accessorised with the Financial Times and what looked like moulded Camper shoes. A very boyish, rus in urbe look for north London. In a week of fashion statements, this was the key one. It shouted: "I am different. I'm a little bit country, a little bit rock'n'roll. I know all about the collapsing economy, but I'm dead casual. I could be shooting in Yorkshire [top half] or relaxing on a yacht in the Maldives [bottom half]. Gordon Brown could never ever rock this look."

Someone must have had a word with him. Next day, Tuesday, leaving Downing Street, he was back in his formal dark-blue number, clubman tie with chocolate-orange stripes firmly knotted. Instead of the FT, he carried important-looking red ledgers. His jaw was set, his eyes fixed on the horizon, like Drake's at Plymouth Hoe. There's nothing like a couple of hours with Gordon to knock the skittishness out of you.

Scroll forward five days and he had a whole new look: the newest member of the Lords showing off his finery in the Queen's Robing Room: Baron Mandelson of Foy in the County of Herefordshire and Hartlepool in the County of Durham, to give him his full title, was almost entirely enveloped by crimson silk, ermine and papal yellow brocade, accessorised by a saucy black bow. The black arms of his suit are the only signs of the sober politician underneath the pantomime garb. Mr Mandelson bears more than a passing resemblance to TE Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia; and looking at the pride on his face, one recalls the scene in the movie when Lawrence (played by Peter O'Toole) poses in the desert in his dazzling white Arab robes. He knows he is a Man of Destiny. So does the Business Secretary.

How he must have hated to put it all back in the dressing-up box, this naturally self-conscious, theatrical man. Next day he was back being normal, leaving a cabinet meeting in a dark grey City suit, and precisely the same tie Alistair Darling's been wearing for three weeks. A fine, sober look – but we know Lord Mandy the Eurodandy was itching to get home to his walk-in wardrobe, to pull out chinos and jumpers, Barbours and sweats and ermine collars and try them on. In the dispiriting aviary of Westminster, he is a peacock who wants to be a bird of prey.