POLITICS has always been a hard product to sell. Ask any adman. If the campaign works then you bask in the reflected glory of the election victory if it fails you're sacked. No one in Britain knows this better than Maurice Saatchi.
Such is his success that his name is synonymous with political campaigning. As a reward for securing the last four Tory general election victories with such messages as "Labour isn't working" to "You can't trust Labour", Saatchi has just been made a life peer.
"Maurice's relationship with us is like a marriage, and he takes his vows very seriously, taking personal charge of the campaign. Why do you think we've signed him up again? He gets results," explained one former Tory director of communications.
Perhaps not surprisingly the Labour Party denounced the decision of the British Prime Minister, Mr John Major, to honour his favourite adman, suggesting it had plunged the peerage system to "new depths". Its anger is particularly sharp as Saatchi has masterminded the latest controversial and powerful campaign which depicts Mr Tony Blair, the Labour leader, with demonic eyes.
Saatchi was born in 1946 in Baghdad, the son of a prosperous Jewish textile merchant. A year later the family emigrated to England, finally settling in Hampstead. All four Saatchi boys went to a state school, but the young Maurice was the one with the "analytical mind".
After achieving a first in economics at the London School of Economics, Saatchi disappointed his professor by rejecting a job in research, announcing that he was planning to establish an advertising agency with his elder brother, Charles, who was already in the industry.
In 1970, the Saatchi and Saatchi advertising agency was formed. "Saatchi is a bloody good name, so bizarre nobody will forget," announced Charles. Always ambitious, Maurice immediately drew up a five-year plan which pinpointed exactly when the company would be listed on the stock market. Its motto was "two ads a day keep the sack away".
Saatchi married the Irish novelist, Josephine Hart, in 1984. They first met when she was his boss at a publishing company. Ms Hart, from Mullingar, believes they are soul-mates. "It is a very good combination, the Irish woman and the Jew," she says.
Ms Hart also credits "M", as she calls him, for making her confront her ambitions to become a best-selling novelist. According to Saatchi, the opening line of her first novel is a "brilliant" observation of his character. "Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive," she wrote.
AFTER masterminding Thatcher's 1979 victorious advertising campaign which was described as brash, self-confident and challenging, the brothers became household names. The accepted view of the two suggests Charles is the "inspirational adman" while Maurice is the "business brain". In the boom years of the 1980s, Saatchi and Saatchi was dubbed the largest advertising agency in the world.
In fact they handled Super cent of the world's advertising. Apart from representing the Tories, they sold British Airways and even contraception with that famous picture of a pregnant man clutching his belly. Such was their wealth and kudos that Saatchi considered buying Midland Bank, one of the largest in Britain. Nothing would ever be so good again.
With what Saatchi describes as "exquisite mistiming", the company, which had seen its share value rise by 10,700 per cent in 15 years, allowed the success to go to its head. In 1986, the brothers bought the American agency Ted Bates, thereby ensuring that Saatchi and Saatchi was indeed the largest agency in the world. The deal went through just six months before the worst recession the advertising industry has ever known.
"You can have too much self-confidence, and that can be a big mistake. We made mistakes which arose from an excess of self-confidence. Because we were so obviously brilliant and so talented and were doing so well for so long, people treated us like god-like creatures and after a while we began to believe them," Saatchi explains now.
Maurice Saatchi's fall from grace at Christmas 1994 was spectacularly humiliating. Not only was he booted out as chairman of the company he had founded and run for 25 years, but the fact that the accountants he had appointed - he described them as "the bean counters" - were behind the decision, made it all the more galling.
"Maurice was very, very gloomy, totally despondent," recalled one colleague. "He just withdrew, he couldn't believe it. It didn't matter that he had all this money and he could carry on living well, he was absolutely devastated. At one point he was thinking of leaving advertising altogether. I don't think he could face the idea of cranking up all over again."
In fact the company was losing money, the debts were mounting and the board believed that the shareholders were infuriated because Charles appeared more interested in his art collection, while Maurice seemed happier to devote his energies to organising 10-page colour photograph spreads of his Sussex mansion for the Architectural Digest.
Saatchi now agrees he had become "remote" from the day-today running of the business.
Just days after the coup de grace and despite it being Christmas, the rumours in the media world began. Saatchi was going to "get even" by creating a new Saatchi agency. One of the first clients he visited after forming a new company was, not surprisingly, Mr Major.
The ensuing legal battle between Saatchi and his old board was bitter, but by the end of it his old company was called Cordiant plc and his new firm was M & C Saatchi.
Saatchi then set about winning back the British Airways account and the Conservative Party's election campaign which, once achieved, were an important morale booster.
"It established Maurice as a major international player and proved that he was back in the business, that he had credibility," explained a journalist at Campaign, the advertising industry's magazine.
However, Saatchi dismisses the idea that he is now motivated by revenge. When an interviewer compared his downhill and subsequent desire for justice to Hamlet, he retorted; "Hamlet's revenge involved losing his own life. I would hate to think that Hamlet's story was analogous."
Confident as ever, Saatchi made a bet at a Downing Street reception last Christmas that the Tories would win the next election, whenever it is, with an increased majority.