I did it with enormous enthusiasm, which I’ve never really lost, and he kept me going with little flasks of brandy and would steady the ladder as I toddled up lamp-posts.I was with my father every step of the way and it was a great education, just learning how a candidate deals with the press, the association, the volunteer force. I learnt his speech off by heart and, in the evenings when we were unwinding with a whisky, I’d mercilessly tease him about it. It had a bit of Churchillian rhetoric about it but it worked alright. And in the last few days we began to realise that it was very doubtful we’d hold the seat.And then that ghastly walk round the count, in a civic hall in Wick, and we immediately could see it wasn’t going to happen because our piles of ballot papers were smaller than other people’s piles. The inevitable result was declared and in fact a kinsman won it for the Liberals. I remember standing outside and I was really very upset for my father.

I think we were all rather shocked, so much had gone into that campaign. It was quite a turning point.The next day I flew off to America. When I came back and started my career in journalism, I never imagined that I could really pull it off myself and become a politician. But there comes a phase where you want to do the actions, not report on the actions of others. Once I had made the mental transition, in my late thirties, and my youngest child had just been born, I knew it would be possible for me to go for it.When I told my father about it – he had inherited his peerage in 1968 and gone to the Lords – he was very nervous for me. But he knew I’d always had it in mind, he could see I was determined and he was so helpful.The great day came and I was selected for Sutton and Cheam.

I rang my father, and said, “Guess what? They even gave me a standing ovation.” And he said, “Hmph, and that’s the last one you’ll ever have,” which is dead right.He supported me throughout the election campaign in 1992, which was marvellous. I learnt the art of door-stepping or cold-calling from my father and I realised there is no short-cut. I do it a lot in Sutton – it catches my constituents by surprise Sutton is a pretty solid Conservative area. It’s where John Major was born and brought up – he spent more of his life in Sutton than in Brixton. I’d say John Major is an absolutely archetypal Sutton success. The couple who live the bungalow he grew up in bought it from his parents and, after the Major-Balls moved out, the couple went to the loft and found a trunk They opened it and found a whole set of clown silks And do you know what they did? They burnt them. They tell this against themselves and say, “Can you imagine? Our future prime minister.” They’re so proud of him.

Come the election there’s a poster of John Major on every single window. And some of the gnomes are still in the garden.My father will be 86 in March and although he won’t be with me for the election, he’s certainly fit enough for us to have regular conversations. We’re the first father and daughter pair in Parliament at the same time – him in the Lords and me in the Commons. I think by the time I got in to Parliament the disappointment, the pain factor had faded for him. I think he was just very proud that I’d achieved something I wantedn. hile Madonna belts out “Don’t Cry for me Argentina” as Evita, a much smaller-scale, oddball musical revival, Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, is on limited release at cinemas around London.