Judging from his performance at the Gomery Inquiry, it obviously stung Jean Chretien very deeply when Justice John Gomery called the little guy from Shawinigan "small-town cheap" in a newspaper interview.

Gomery took the shot in mid-December in response to the former prime minister's decision to have golf balls with his initials created and distributed. The golf balls cost the sponsorship program $1,200.

Chretien's lawyer David Scott mentioned it when he tried convincing Gomery to recuse himself in late January.

But Chretien got his revenge Tuesday, at the end of his testimony at the Gomery inquiry. Responding to a question from his own lawyer, Chretien told the inquiry the balls weren't for Liberal pals. They were for fellow world leaders.

"I have a ball here signed by a Texan by the name of George Bush," he said after pulling a golf ball out of his light-brown briefcase. "I have one here signed by a gentleman from Tennessee: Al Gore, with the seal of Capitol Hill on the ball." When his lawyer tried to stop him, Chretien said: "No, no, no: This is too much fun."

He then added: "And here is a ball signed again by the small-town guy from Hope, Bill Clinton, and the seal." Asked what seal, Chretien said: "The seal of the U.S. president."

Then Chretien hit Gomery a little closer to home.

"I have one here by a very well-known group: Ogilvy Renault. You know them? Mr. Roy and Mr. Mulroney and Mademoiselle Gomery are all members of that firm. You cannot call them small town," he said.

He was referring to former Progressive Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney; Bernard Roy, chief counsel for the inquiry and Mulroney's one-time chief of staff; and Sally Gomery, the judge's daughter and a partner in the firm. Ogilvy Renault is one of the country's most prestigious law firms, based in the Montreal neighbourhood of Westmount.

Then, with deliberate, heavy sarcasm, he said: "And to call them Westmount cheap, it would be an oxymoron."

It was a well-scripted moment. So well-scripted, one might wonder if Chretien had some help with it.

Warren Kinsella is a former staffer for Chretien. He is known for having a certain flare for visual political communication.

The author of Kicking Ass in Canadian Politics helped ridicule then-Canadian Alliance party leader Stockwell Day, who admitted to holding creationist beliefs, in the 2000 federal election campaign. Kinsella did so by pulling out a purple Barney the Dinosaur doll during a Canada AM appearance.

Asked by CTV.ca if he played a role in Chretien's golf ball stunt, Kinsella -- who has also appeared before the inquiry as a witness -- replied, "All I can tell you officially is that all the good ideas are Mr. Chretien's and any of the bad ones would be associated with his former staff."

When asked if he'd be surprised to see the clip leading newscasts or picture on front pages Wednesday morning, Kinsella said: "Somehow I would be not very surprised to see that, and probably we'll see the Toronto Sun tomorrow morning say something like, 'He's got a lot of balls.'"

More seriously, Kinsella -- who refers to the process as the "Gomery Pyle" inquiry on his weblog -- said this about the golf balls:

"As you know, the golf ball statement by Justice Gomery -- that extraordinary interview where he called Chretien 'small-town cheap,' so he's attacked a witness before he's even shown up, a former prime minister. And it was in the context of the golf balls.

"So I think Chretien's genius was he recognized here's a way to confront Judge Gomery, here's a way to confront that allegation and here's a way to remind people - in a funny way, without getting angry and upset or whatnot - that this is actually something done by leaders around the world, and it's just a courtesy, and there's no scandal associated with it."

Why it hurt

Chretien currently moves in rarified circles. For example, he has helped mediate the dispute been Russian oil giant Yukos and the Russian government. His daughter married into the Desmarais clan that runs Quebec's Power Corp.

When he left politics in 1984, he went to work on Bay Street as a lawyer, "but he isn't one of those guys," Lawrence Martin, an Ottawa journalist and author of a two-volume biography of Chretien, told CTV.ca.

Chretien has always been proud of the fact he came from a working-class family of 19 children in a tough Quebec mill town. While Chretien lives now in an Ottawa condominium, he has a lakefront retreat near Shawinigan where he spends almost half the year.

"He's always been sensitive to his portrayal, particularly by the intellectual class in Montreal, as a low-brow kind of guy," Martin said.

When Chretien graduated from Laval University's law school, he went back to Shawinigan to practice. But the stars went to the big law firms in Montreal, he said.

"Jean Chretien's style was always of the factory-type guy, the blue-collar worker. He became very, very, very bitter towards these people like Jacques Parizeau and Brian Mulroney, these smoothies who were slick. So it's particularly cutting when somebody would use that (small-town cheap) remark."

That would also explain the "Westmount cheap" shot, he said.

Martin gave full marks to Chretien for his performance in this particular political theatre.

By trying to discredit the commission in the weeks leading up to his appearance, "Chretien succeeded in coming into today's questioning by putting these guys a little bit on the defensive," he said.

Gomery didn't interject like he normally did. "Chretien kept banging Bernard Roy over the head with the fact he's Mulroney's old aide. I think it worked for him. This guy's a wily operator and he proved it again today," he said.

Roy never even asked about golf balls; Chretien's lawyer brought it up "because he knew (Chretien) could bat it out of the park," Martin said.

And with the golf ball finale, Chretien finished the day "with a hole in one," he said. "He minimized the whole thing. He's the Great Minimizer."

But the sponsorship scandal is about much more important things than golf balls, he said.

With a report from CTV's Roger Smith