The Glasgow Sunday Mail and other British media outlets recall the love story of the country’s Chancellor Gordon Brown with Romania’s Princess Margarita back in the seventies as they go back to sources of the time to depict the “human” side of the prime minister-in-waiting.

The reports come as Britain is preparing for several weeks of political bickering over Brown’s expected take-over of PM duties from incumbent Tony Blair.

The Sunday Mail quotes Aysha Cockshott, 53, one of Brown’s former university colleagues, who in the seventies was a member of the campaign team that helped him become a rector at the University of Edinburgh.

According to Cockshott, Brown “was a great company, sincere, polite and intelligent and he was dating Princess Margarita of Romania when he ran as rector”.

The story of their love affair appeared in a Guardian report back in 2001, when Princess Margarita, the eldest daughter of Romania’s King Michael - who lived in exile for many decades - was quoted as saying that "it was a very solid and romantic story.

I never stopped loving him but one day it didn't seem right any more, it was politics, politics, politics, and I needed nurturing."