IT'S not often that a 52-year-old with a paunch and greying, dishevelled hair, dressed in flannel trousers and a dandruff-flecked sports jacket makes me go weak at the knees.

But from the moment I clapped eyes on Gordon Brown outside the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary on Saturday, I was smitten. Me, and a million other women. For there is nothing more appealing than a rugged alpha male openly embracing fatherhood.

"Ahhhhh. Bless," we sighed as he welled up with emotion, as if he was about to laugh and cry at the same time. "I am a father now. Nothing is more important than that," he said. "Nothing."

We all love a new daddy - just look at what the arrival of Brooklyn and Romeo did for David Beckham's image. Even Michael Portillo experienced an unlikely surge in popularity when he had a go at being a single parent last week.

And remember how the Hugh Grant character in the film About A Boy found that simply borrowing a child and pretending he was a dad made him irresistible to women?

Strap a bawling infant in a sling onto any man's chest and he becomes an instant babe magnet.

But the circumstances of Gordon Brown's longed for baby son's arrival - less than two years after the death of his ten-day-old daughter Jennifer Jane - makes his transformation from famously dour Iron Chancellor to great, big, soppy, loved-up dad especially poignant.

Having had a baby myself just over a year ago, I should add that new mothers, unfortunately, do not become objects of mass male adoration in the same way. In fact, it's just the opposite.

Tired, weary, overweight and still unable to fit into anything other than baggy maternity clothes, usually stained with baby sick, the last thing we need is other women going all soppy over our husbands.

So take a tip from me, Sarah. Let Gordon help with the nappies and night feeds by all means - but, whatever you do, don't let him take baby John out on his own.

THE latest Disney film, Finding Nemo, cleverly plays on all the same emotions that make us go gushy over Gordon Brown. In fact, on Saturday I couldn't help thinking of Gordon as we watched the daddy fish on the big screen crying after a shark ate his wife and all their little fish eggs before discovering that one had survived. As he cradled his precious little baby in his fins, promising to care for and protect him, I couldn't help wondering if gorgeous Gordon might be doing much the same thing at that very moment. Gulp.

ANIMAL lovers in the North-East warn the popularity of Finding Nemo could lead to children pestering for tropical clownfish as pets. Fish, they stress, are for life and not just the duration of the latest kiddie-blockbuster. But, having seen the film, I don't think they should worry. Since the story is about how miserable tropical fish are when confined to a tank, children are more likely to stage protests outside pet shops, demanding we free the fish.