Does the German Chancellor dye his hair? Millions of television viewers had an opportunity to find out last Saturday night when Mr Gerhard Schroder appeared on Wetten dass . . . ("I'll bet you that"), the country's most popular game show.
The Chancellor's appearance boosted the show's ratings to their highest ever level. And the viewers were not disappointed. They saw Mr Schroder kissing Whitney Houston's hand, flirting with a pretty young actress and laughing heartily as a comedian impersonated him.
The show highlighted how dramatically Germany's political culture has changed in the four months since Mr Schroder's coalition of Social Democrats and Greens took office.
Dr Helmut Kohl was a much more skilful media manipulator than he cared to pretend and was perfectly comfortable in a television studio. But he would never have countenanced appearing on anything as downmarket as Wetten dass . . .
In the run-up to last year's election, Dr Kohl bowed to campaign strategists' requests and appeared on a chat show hosted by Germany's most fawning interviewer, Alfred Biolek.
During the interview, the former chancellor even revealed his favourite recipe for caramel pudding, a move that was seen as a major step towards informality.
But Dr Kohl was always careful to maintain the distance he believed was appropriate to the dignity of his office, so that jokes about his weight and appetite were strictly out of bounds.
The new government, dominated by former firebrands who came of age in the 1960s, has little time for such formalities. Everyone is on first-name terms, and the familiar du has replaced the formal Sie as the preferred mode of address in cabinet meetings.
The new, relaxed mood owes much to the arrival in power of more women than Bonn has ever seen before. Left-wing women such as the Health Minister, Ms Andrea Fischer, are less prone to the pomposity that often grips their male colleagues at the first whiff of power.
The Foreign Minister, Mr Joschka Fischer, alarmed some of his admirers when he exchanged his old, casual garb for a succession of expensive suits. But visitors to a Green rally in Bavaria last week were invited to "jog with Joschka" through a nearby forest, an invitation few other foreign ministers would extend.
Mr Schroder makes no secret of the satisfaction he derives from being in power and shrugs off the setbacks of his government's first 100 days with a good-humoured smile.
The Chancellor's self-deprecating charm may account for much of his continuing popularity and it was on full display on Saturday night.
Wetten dass . . . is a three-hour show in which celebrities bet on whether contestants will succeed in performing some outlandish task they have set themselves. The Chancellor bet that two unsmiling young men would succeed in rotating a full tankard of beer 360 degrees using only the front wheel of a camper van.
When they lost, Mr Schroder turned the occasion to his advantage by quipping: "It's different doing it on-air than during practice sessions. I know that from my own experience."
The audience could choose between two forfeits to punish the Chancellor for guessing wrongly. They could subject his hair to expert analysis to see if it is dyed or they could oblige him to drive an old lady home from the show.
Mystifyingly, they chose the latter, and a reluctant old lady was pushed into Mr Schroder's armoured Audi along with the rest of her family.
A little earlier, Whitney Houston looked worried when told that the Chancellor, who was introduced to her as "our Bill Clinton, but nicer", was looking for a passenger.
"I'm a lady all right, but he can't drive me home," she said, without a trace of a smile.
When the old lady and her family piled into the Chancellor's car, there was no room for Mr Schroder, so he contented himself with directing his driver as he backed out of the studio.
The audience roared with delight to see their Chancellor behaving like a perfectly ordinary person, making jokes about his four marriages and his reputation as a womaniser.
As for the hair, the Chancellor insisted that it was not dyed. And, leaning towards the young actress who posed the question, Mr Schroder added meaningfully: "Everything is real, and I mean everything."
