Josh Halliday

He was born in Liverpool and then moved at quite a young age to Colcheth, which is in between Manchester and Liverpool.

He's an Everton fan.

Everyone knows that.

Everyone's seen him jogging in his retro football shirt.

Very short shorts.

And horrific shorts.

I don't think he would ever claim to be poor growing up, you know, but he had quite a working class background, working class sensibilities, a labour supporting family.

His dad worked for the post office.

He tells this story of, you know, sort of being radicalised by the minor strikes in the 80s when he was a young boy.

The school that he went to was near one of the picket lines.

And, you know, he's written about banging on the school bus window, you know, on the way into school to show support for the striking miners and, you know, people bringing in tins of food for other children at his school whose parents were on the picket line.

And I think that sort of helps set alight his sort of interest in politics from that early age.

He joined Labour at the age of 14 or 15.

And three years later, he was at Cambridge University and read English.

He felt like an imposter.

There wasn't many young people from his part of the world that ended up at Cambridge University.

He joined Westminster, if you like, in the mid-90s when he was in his mid-20s, first as a researcher for Tessa Jowell before the 97 general election, seemed to get a taste for, you know, politics and, you know, very quickly wanted to become an MP.

That was set quite early on, yeah.

He's described it as a, you know, kind of guilty secret that he wanted to be an MP.

And he was a special advisor for Chris Smith, the culture secretary.