Will mud stick to slick Mick?

Finally, a chance to pat ourselves on the back. Tory leadership candidate Michael “hot lips” Portillo has been in the news, allegedly breaking Parliamentary rules by failing to declare earnings from outside interests.

Yet as long ago as February 28, 1997, this magazine was digging up Portillo’s private business arrangements with adland.

While he was Defence Secretary, the bequiffed housewife’s favourite, who changes his politics more often than his socks, didn’t register a payment estimated at &£2,000, made to his constituency party or another Conservative fund for attending a meeting at Bates Dorland in 1995.

This followed revelations that Portillo’s constituency party (or another Tory group) received between &£3,000 and &£5,000 to appear at a McCann-Erickson function in the same year.

You heard it here first