Hungarian Letter: You know an election race has really begun when a politician puts on his dancing shoes.
After at least two heart attacks and facing defeat to the communists in 1996, Boris Yeltsin showed he would do almost anything to retain the Russian presidency when he danced across stage in front of an amazed pop group and millions of watching voters.
With the financial help of a few future "oligarchs", Mr Yeltsin defied illness, poor dancing skills and abysmal opinion-poll ratings to win re-election to the Kremlin.
That victory may be a happy portent for Ferenc Gyurcsany, Hungary's prime minister, who has offered a glimpse of his own twinkling toes to a nation that goes to the polls in April.
The self-made millionaire has a fondness for ad lib that can drive his aides to despair, as when he commended Hungary's footballers for their "death-defying bravery against these terrorists" after they played out a draw with Saudi Arabia.
That overheard quip at a party caused a stir in the Hungarian press and diplomatic circles, but may have won him some respect among the more extreme supporters of Fidesz, the conservative opposition party with a nationalist streak.
Not long after the Saudi gaffe, Mr Gyurcsany's spin doctors revealed he had given a frightened runaway a bed for the night and a lift home the next day, after she knocked on a random Budapest door and found the premier and his wife living behind it.
Now, as polls show him trailing the earnest Fidesz leader Viktor Orban, Mr Gyurcsany's publicity machine has unleashed its own version of the election-winning Yeltsin jig.
The video begins with a clip of Hugh Grant playing the British prime minister in the romantic comedy Love Actually.
The sombre premier pulls off his tie and stares disconsolately out of the window of 10 Downing Street but, as Jump by the Pointer Sisters begins to play, he shrugs off his glum mood and starts to dance.
But suddenly the footage darkens and becomes grainy, and Hugh Grant 'morphs' into Mr Gyurcsany, who proceeds to spin and sashay around the room in wild delight.
"The scene even surprised us who meet the prime minister daily and obviously know him in a way most people don't," said Mr Gyurcsany's spokesman, Andras Batiz, of the clip that is available on the web at http://dl.index.hu/trailer/2.wmv.
Mr Gyurcsany (44) said the video was part of his wedding gift to Mr Batiz. "It has been a habit for quite a few years with my friends that we watch a Hugh Grant movie on New Year's Eve, or more precisely at dawn on New Year's Day, either Notting Hill or Love Actually," he admitted in his weblog.
" asked if it would bother me if he showed the clip to his friends and relatives, if it would embarrass me if my clowning around gained wider distribution," he added.
"I replied that it would not."
It is hard to imagine many other European leaders even trying the stunt, never mind getting away with it, but the Socialists made Mr Gyurcsany their leader to banish a stuffy image and to take on the slick Mr Orban face-to-face.
The Socialists won the 2002 elections after a bitter battle with Fidesz that culminated in rallies through Budapest and 70 per cent voter turnout at the polls.
And this year's ballot seems just as likely to split families.
Fidesz has launched a highly personal campaign focusing on the private wealth of Mr Gyurcsany and his interior minister in a country where many urban and rural poor have seen few obvious benefits from free-market democracy.
Fidesz - whose campaign slogan is "We are worse off today than four years ago" - also accused the Financial Times of being "bought" by the government to print favourable items on Hungary in a recent supplement of the newspaper.
An outraged Socialist party denied the accusations, and countered with charges of its own that Fidesz had hacked into its computers to steal campaign information. Fidesz denied hacking, but said government computers were attacking its own systems.
Behind the glare of all the fireworks, policy battles are also being fought.
Mr Gyurcsany wants to slash a bloated bureaucracy, modernise education and healthcare and encourage more foreign investment, while Mr Orban promises tax cuts, more welfare spending and a focus on small- and medium-sized Hungarian businesses.
Both think they have the remedy for a growing budget deficit that has probably scuppered plans to adopt the euro in 2010.
Fidesz took heart from the victory of eurosceptic conservatives in Poland's elections, and the rise in Slovakia and the Czech Republic of similarly hued parties.
But having played Hugh Grant playing the British prime minister in his terpsichorean home video, Mr Gyurcsany today unveils another election weapon: Tony Blair flies in to Budapest to rally the Socialists - but he is unlikely to be asked to dance.
