SAMAK SUNDARAVEJ: Top man in Thailand

Try to imagine a particularly pungent stew combining the foul-mouthed cookery of Gordon Ramsay, the salty remarks of Alf Garnett and the schmaltz of Jerry Springer.

Throw in a personal history peppered with rather disturbing allegations, and add a pinch of corruption scandal. Simmer in a fragile parliament, serve to a polarised electorate and you have Thailand’s first democratically elected prime minister since 2006.

On paper, Monday’s swearing-in of Samak Sundaravej was a triumphant return to civilian government. The coup that ousted Thaksin Shinawatra exposed the fragility of Thai democracy: the December elections were a symbolic recovery of political maturity. But, at 72, Samak is hardly an ideal symbol of a return to business as usual.

For four decades the avuncular media pundit and cookery aficionado has made a unique imprint on Thai politics. It is an imprint that could cause his Government considerable difficulties as he tries to fulfil his true mission – of giving Thailand the government that Thaksin would be giving it were he not in exile in London.

As well as (contested) allegations of corrupt deals while he was Mayor of Bangkok in the early 1990s, Samak is charged with defaming a former deputy mayor of the city.

If his defence fails, he could face prison and the immediate loss of his new position.

To his supporters, Samak’s profane rants and no-nonsense ultra-conservatism make him a man of the people. To his detractors – mainly in the media, military and royalist elites – those same qualities make him a boorish, dangerous rabble-rouser.

Newspaper cartoonists portray him as a pig. His party has tried, without success, to persuade him to tone down his language: he recently countered a fairly benign question from a female reporter by asking her if she had “recently had sinful sex”.

Perhaps the most familiar image of him, though, is as the TV celebrity chef and star of Tasting and Grumbling – a show that went off the air recently, but which the new Prime Minister vowed would make a speedy return. It was a perfect vehicle for Samak, whose passion for Thai cuisine is undoubted.

In fact, he has been a media figure since the 1970s, when he starred in a wildly popular anti-communist radio show.

Samak’s political career, which includes holding eight Cabinet posts, began in 1968 when he joined the Democrat Party. Bangkok, where he was born to Chinese parents, was the source of his power and the place from which, in 1976, his radio show helped to persuade angry mobs to storm a student protest in which dozens of activists were burnt to death. Samak, as Interior Minister, said that the massacre was the work of communists from Vietnam. The evidence, he said, was that the bodies of burnt dogs had been found among those of the students. Vietnamese, he explained, enjoy eating dogs.

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