"Brown Bottom" Raked Over...By The Manchester Guardian

The opening of the Guardian article features an extended discussion of Gordon Brown's decision to sell off 395 tonnes of U.K. gold - right around the bottom of the market. His decision is already infamous as being the costliest decision made by a U.K. finance minister.

It would have taken a confirmed cynic - and/or a gold believer - to see that sale as a buying signal. At around the same time, the now-defunct show Sabrina, The Teenage Witch portrayed the principal of the school Sabrina attended - a normally buffonish character - as a goldbug. Market nuts take note: had it been read with a cynic's eye, that episode would have been a clarion buy signal for the metal, just as the "Brown bottom" was. Of course, few people of the mind to be contrarian investors would have seen that episode at the time.

The rest of the article uses the bad-Brown example as a hook to make people more aware of the real value of their gold when the "Cash for Gold" companies come calling. It's a very British way of making people look around for a better deal from a vendor.