Martin Bell was unavailable, so Sedgefield’s clean hands candidate is whistle-blowing Ex-MI5 agent David Shayler. When Guido had a few pints with him (at a secret underground rendevous) a couple of weeks ago, two things struck me, he wasn’t, as I feared, a nutcase and he’d done well on the girlfriend front.

Shayler, a former counter-terrorism agent, is standing against the ‘security PM’ because “Our democracy is in crisis and unless we act now, there will be no democracy left fighting for. If we can encourage a large protest vote in Sedgefield, it would send a clear message to the politicians of this country that the people have had enough of autocratic leaders who fail to represent their constituents.”

Optimistically he reckons “if things go right, the people of Britain might again be dancing in the streets over another ‘Portillo moment'”.