Jose Mourinho has banished Mr Grumpy... but how long before the facade cracks?

It is amazing what time away from the dugout can do for a manager. Take a coach away from the rigours of the job and the stresses and strains fall away like a veil.

For Sir Alex Ferguson, all it ever took was a summer on the Cote D'Azur with wife Cathy and he would return for pre-season with an outlook as sunny as an afternoon in Antibes.

It used to last until October and, watching Jose Mourinho on Thursday, it was tempting to wonder how long he will keep up the 'new me but still the old me' routine he presented with such breathtaking choreography in north London.

Dressed in lavender for his first day on public duty, the new manager of Tottenham could not have been more convivial had he walked in carrying flowers.

As it was, he made do with verbal bouquets. 'You are one of the good guys,' he said to the man from talkSPORT, neglecting to mention who the bad ones were.

'You will miss me as a pundit,' was his message to the chap from Sky. About that, he was right.

But watching the faux humility — 'I was always humble, you just didn't notice' — and self-deprecation — 'This isn't about me. I am here to help everybody' — recalled the words of a staffer at Manchester United's in-house TV channel who once described Mourinho's countenance during their professional engagements as 'like somebody talking into a hostage camera'.

To place this version of Mourinho in some kind of context, it is necessary to stress just how sullen, moody and generally rather rude he was to staff at his previous club.

In fact, to suggest he was moody may be to afford him too much credit. The truth is that his misery was unrelenting.

So why should it be different this time? Well, Mourinho can live at home. In his London house. Rather than a hotel in Manchester. He will hardly be able to cycle to work but it should help nevertheless.

That apart, he will find himself bound by constraints familiar to those that irked him at Old Trafford — namely money and a squad, talented as it is, that is not good enough to challenge champions Manchester City.

He said it himself on Thursday. 'I need to win.' It's part of Mourinho's raison d'etre.

Whether it be in sport or in conversation, the last word must always be Mourinho's if his enormous sense of entitlement and self-worth is not to be left dangerously unsatisfied.

So this is a dangerous appointment for Tottenham even if, as somebody said cleverly this week, it may have been the best of the bad choices they had before them.

If it works and Tottenham win a trophy at last, then Daniel Levy will feel it was worth all the drama that will inevitably come his way before long.

If it doesn't, then what is left of the House of Mauricio Pochettino will be in pieces around our feet before we know it.

'I went very deep,' Mourinho said, referring to the period of self-reflection that followed his sacking by United last December. That was a nice line but if he found anything he didn't immediately recognise, it would be a huge surprise. He is 56, after all.

More pertinent was perhaps this. 'Sometimes, you have to work with people you don't love,' he said. 'And work well.'

That was more like it. Mourinho unmasked. The real Jose. Welcome back. Welcome to Tottenham.