Searching for Michael Portillo On the Slow Train
17 June 2010
Many people have asked me: "Did you meet Michael Portillo when writing On the Slow Train?" Curiously I never did, although he was travelling round the country for his really excellent TV series on Great British Railway Journeys at the same time as I was writing On the Slow Train. We know each other vaguely but he, I guess, knew nothing about On the Slow Train and I knew nothing about his project. If we had met we would have had much in common from our previous lives - he as a senior politician and me as the deputy editor of a national newspaper, holding his political colleagues to account. Maybe one day there will be a moment on an idyllic, historic and characterful country junction where we will meet after arriving on the slow train and greet along the lines of "Dr Portillo I presume!"
Have your say