Mr Peter Mandelson: never endeared himself to populace the way Dr Mo Mowlam had
Tony Blair once said Peter Mandelson was the man Labour would simply have to learn to love. In his relatively short tenure as Northern Secretary, Mr Mandelson may have succeeded in keeping the peace process going, but he failed to endear himself to locals in the way his predecessor, Dr Mo Mowlam, did.
On walkabouts in Belfast city centre, he has seemed ill at ease. His golden retriever, Bobby, and later a second dog, Jack, accompanied him on such public outings. Mr Mandelson's four-legged friends were rolled out for photo opportunities and went some way to humanising the man with a reputation for being cold, calculating and manipulative.
When discussing Mr Mandelson, locals are keen to express the differences between him and Dr Mowlam. "He certainly kept a much lower profile," said one Hillsborough resident who didn't want to be named. "Mo Mowlam used to regularly visit the Hillside pub in the village, bringing people like Grant Mitchell from Eastenders. Mr Mandelson only went in once or twice and he was rarely spotted about the place".
He was occasionally seen shopping with his mother around Lisburn, one local said, while an eclectic bunch of friends, including an ex-girlfriend of Prince Charles, Sabrina Guinness, have been entertained at the castle. Show-business friends are said to include comedian Stephen Fry and movie star Tom Cruise.
The 47-year-old Mr Mandelson was born in the upmarket north London suburb of Hampstead. His grandfather was Herbert Morrison, a leading Labour MP who, as home secretary in the 1940s, had responsibility for Northern Ireland.
As a teenager, Mr Mandelson joined the Labour Party and later studied politics at Oxford. First jobs included a post with the Trade Union Council and a stint as a producer for London Weekend Television. He was made Labour's communications director in 1985 and elected MP for Hartlepool in 1992.
Although credited with turning the fortunes of Labour around, Old Labour never learned to love him in the way Tony Blair would have liked. Its mistrust of him was only heightened when, in December 1998, he resigned his job as trade and industry secretary after it was revealed he accepted a loan of around £400,000 from Geoffrey Robinson, paymaster general, to help pay the mortgage on his home in London.
Among those who won't be shedding tears when Mr Mandelson packs his bags are the organisers of the Hillsborough Oyster Festival. During the summer they asked the Northern Secretary for permission to pitch a marquee in the grounds of the castle to host a ball. Mr Mandelson acquiesced but laid down a few conditions. Like a party-pooping fairy godmother, he was insistent that the festivities should be over by midnight, whereas fun-loving Dr Mowlam had let the party run on much longer in previous years.
Always careful to cultivate friends in the media, Mr Mandelson went along to a dinner with a number of journalists in the Merrion Hotel last month hosted by the British embassy in Dublin. "He was very relaxed, very pleasant," one remarked later. "He said that he wanted to spend more time in the South and asked about good places to go out socially in Dublin".
More recently, at a drinks party in the North, he told a number of journalists that he found them very good company compared to the press pack in London, whom he considered "obnoxious".