£21,500 watch for the Prince of Darkness

Mandy's £21,500 watch: It takes a year to make and drips with gold and diamonds. How VERY New Labour!!

Peter Mandelson this week reached out to an important bloc of voters in a bravura conference performance. I mean, of course, that hitherto-untapped reservoir of electoral strength; Britain's community of wristwatch enthusiasts.

Through the wonders of high-resolution digital photography, watch lovers were able to see that, as he walked to the conference, Mandelson was wearing a Patek Philippe watch - and not just any old Patek Philippe but - to give it its full name - a Reference 5146 annual calendar in yellow gold with a dark slate grey dial.

How thrilling to see at last a British politician who is unafraid to brandish a watch that takes more than a year to build and which is powered by the legendary self-winding calibre known as 315 S IRM QA LU. Mandelson is wearing a tiny micromechanical marvel painstakingly assembled from 355 minuscule components.
Reassuring price tag: Peter Mandelson models his Patek Philippe Reference 5146 at the Labour Party Conference - a timepiece worth £21,500

Patek Philippe makes watches for serious collectors. The company was founded in 1839 and Pateks have been worn by Queen Victoria, Albert Einstein, Duke Ellington and Vladimir Putin. So- called 'God's Banker' Roberto Calvi was wearing one when he was found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge in 1982.
Pateks could not be further from the bling of the MTV generation who favour half a kilo of gold and a few carats of diamonds. Instead, a Patek Philippe has all the traditional qualities you would expect of a Swiss watch: accuracy, discretion and a price tag that is perhaps best described as reassuring.
I've visited its factory in Geneva and, while it retains all the artisan craftsmanship you would associate with a master watchmaker, its technology is extraordinary. The workshops are as clean as an operating theatre.

Some of the watches, the minute repeaters, sound the hours, quarters and minutes. But before the chime is considered acceptable, the company's owner, Philippe Stern, listens individually to each one. To ensure he does not reject too many, a computer programme which mimics his ear listens to the watches first.

Patek Philippe watches start at around £10,000; for this you will get the Aquanaut, made of steel and with a rubber strap, or a manually wound yellow gold Calatrava Ref 5199.
One to watch: A Patek Philippe timepiece as sported by Peter Mandelson at conference this week
A watch such as the one worn by Mandelson costs £21,490 - that's with its crocodile- skin strap fastened with a deployant (folding) buckle that closes with a satisfying snap and displays the discreet company emblem of the Calatrava cross, which Patek (and here's an interesting bit) borrowed from a military order of 12th-century Spanish knights.