HE DID not win the presidential election yesterday. Nobody expected he would. But Russian voters are grateful to Vladimir Bryntsalov for having provided most of the fun and scandal during the campaign.
The role of clown in Russian politics used to belong to the nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky. But he was disappointingly sensible this time, talking mostly about compromise and coalitions.
Of course there were some lapses in taste, like the day last week when he appeared before the crowds in Moscow wearing a canary yellow Mao suit, or his declaration at a press conference that he was packing his wife Galina off to north Korea so she would not get in his way while he ran for president. But from the man who once threatened to nuke Japan and promised that the Russian empire would expand until its soldiers "washed their boots in the Indian Ocean" this was pretty tame stuff.
While Mr Zhirinovsky has turned into a more or less solid politician, the jester's cap and bells have passed to Mr Bryntsalov, an astonishingly vulgar self made millionaire. Of course he still has a lot to learn from the master.
While Mr Zhirinovsky sits stony faced, allowing his audiences to roar with shocked laughter at his outrageous pronouncements, Mr Bryntsalov laughs at his own jokes, brays in fact. "Money is mankind's greatest invention, HA, HA, HA."
But of the also rans of the Russian election, Mr Bryntsalov (49), with hid distinctive bottle brush haircut and penchant for loud sports jackets, has managed to get himself noticed. Now a nationally known figure, he has a reputation on which to build a future in politics.
He has been helped in this by his sexy young wife, Natasha "My second wife, but not my last HA, HA, HA." He is reported to pay her around £12,000 per month for housekeeping and "keeping up the family image".
She followed him everywhere on his election trips.
ON THE road to St Petersburg, she was filmed by the side of the Bryntsalov motorcade coyly picking buttercups. On another occasion, the strawberry blonde dropped her trousers for the cameras while her husband smacked her rear, a now famous manoeuvre which has launched a new political career.
Backside aside, what did Mr Bryntsalov offer the voters? Jingoism of course a scorched earth policy in Chechnya plus the assurance that if he could build up a successful company with an annual turnover of three trillion roubles (£395 million) then nothing could be easier than running a country of 150 million people.
He claims to have come from "humble stock" in the Stavropol region of southern Russia, which was also home to Mikhail Gorbachev. In 1979, Mr Bryntsalov was expelled from the Communist Party for revealing "petty bourgeois tendencies" by building himself a private house.
But he flourished in Mr Gorbachev's time of perestroika, setting up a beekeeping co-operative which earned him the equivalent of £533,300 from the sale of honey.
He used the honey money to buy the ailing Soviet Kirov pharmaceutical factory in southern Moscow, which he quickly turned into a market leader under its pre-revolutionary name of Ferane. He is said to pay $800,000 per month, a princely way by Russian standards, to the 15,000 people who work for him producing and packaging antibiotics.
During the election campaign, be stressed the medical aspect of his business, playing down the fact that the Ferane plant also distils vodka. Bottles with Mr Bryntsalov's rugged face on the label are on sale in kiosks all over Moscow and seasoned drinkers say the brew makes paint stripper taste delicate.