Mark Malloch Brown, the new minister at the Foreign Office, will be lying in a darkened room today, breathing deeply with a wet towel on his head.

The former deputy UN Secretary General, who was regarded as the bane of the neo-cons in Washington, recently declared confidently in an eye-popping newspaper interview that Britain and America would no longer be "joined at the hip" on foreign policy.

In the Machiavellian world of Westminster this was seen by some as yet another sign that Gordon Brown, the newly-installed Prime Minister, was seeking to distance himself from Tony Blair's reign by loosening the ties that have bound Britain and America for decades.

Even when Mr Brown personally implored all his cabinet colleagues to go forth and talk up the so-called "special relationship", and David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, went public to emphatically declare that the UK's link with the US was its "most important bilateral relationship", there were still some souls rubbing their chins and thinking Gordy was up to something sneaky.

There is no doubt it was a messy business and the Tories enjoyed making some political hay with it.

Yesterday, as the PM crossed the Atlantic, he threw everything but the kitchen sink in as he declared his undying fondness and admiration for our neighbour across the water.

If it were not for his continuing Britishness theme, it would be a sound bet the Brown family would be heading for Cape Cod this summer for their traditional getaway to America.

The PM has "many" American friends and is said to idolise Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the US Federal Reserve.

On board his flight, Mr Brown covered every base in emphasising his Atlanticist outlook, even waxing lyrically about the values underpinning the American Declaration of Independence.

Then, with a gimlet eye to his host's own personal heroes, he invoked the spirit of wartime leader Winston Churchill, a bust of whom sits proudly on George W Bush's desk in the Oval Office.

While journalism is often the practice of hope over experience, there was never a chance the accompanying hacks would hear the Presbyterian Scot telling the Texan redneck to go stuff it.

It is not known - yet - whether the Prime Minister and the President share the same toothpaste (Mr Bush famously revealed how he and Tony Blair favoured the same Colgate brand on Blair's first Camp David visit in 2001), but expect a lot of sharing in the next 48 hours.

Mr Brown last night came up with a "shared history", "shared ideals", a "shared purpose", "shared values" and a "shared destiny". If people were not paying enough attention, we also had a "joint inheritance", a "partnership", "common interests" and a "common history".

As Mr Brown goes to Washington, the language between the two leaders will be mutually gushing even though the PM has rejected Dubya's favourite phrase of "the war on terror".

While there will probably be no "Yo Brown!", the body language will be forensically assessed to see if there is an icicle of coolness between the two leaders or anything remotely resembling the GBGBs.

It may be remembered how, as Mr Bush donned a snug bomber jacket when Mr Blair visited his Camp David retreat in 2001, the British leader at the time was coatless and swaggered up the hill cowboy-style with his hands locked in his uncomfortably-looking tight jeans.

Mr Brown, of course, does not dress down, or up for that matter; that Christmas present of a tartan shirt will remain firmly in the PM's wardrobe.

Obviously, the Scot has a hard act to follow. To use Lord Malloch Brown's analogy, Mr Blair and Mr Bush were often seemingly "joined at the hip", their closeness helped by the intensity and turbulence of the aftermath of 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq.

Yet while the new Prime Minister is unlikely to have as close a personal relationship with the President as his predecessor, he will continue to stand shoulder to shoulder with America at least on those shared values if not some specific policies.

The canny Mr Brown will not need reminding that even a lame duck US President is still by far the most powerful politician on the planet.