DID YOU KNOW? Michael Portillo

As Michael, 65, unlocks the secrets of another abandoned building in Portillo’s Hidden History Of Britain (9pm, Ch5), here are some things you might not know about the ex-MP...

Michael Denzil Xavier Portillo was born on May 26, 1953 in Bushey, Hertfordshire, to an exiled Spanish republican father and a Scottish mother. At the age of four, he was registered as a Spanish citizen and, in accordance with Spanish naming customs, his Spanish passport names him as Miguel Portillo Blyth.

He made his first TV appearances when, in 1961, he starred as the

Ribena Kid in a series of advertisements.

He attended Harrow County School, and went on to gain a first-class degree in history from Cambridge University.

He became a Conservative MP in

1984 when he stood for and won the

Enfield Southgate by-election following the murder of the incumbent, Anthony Berry, in the IRA bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton. He unexpectedly lost the seat to Labour’s Stephen Twigg in 1997. He returned as MP for Kensington and Chelsea in 1999, but quit the House of Commons after the 2005 election. As a teenager, he had a poster of Labour leader Harold Wilson on his bedroom wall. Michael first met his future wife, Carolyn Eadie, when they were at school. They married in 1982, and have no children. He is not a fan of Prime Minister Theresa May’s ‘Chequers plan’ for the Brexit negotiations: ‘I think this is the most dreadful betrayal, and if I had been a member of the Cabinet, I would have been one of the ones who would have quit over the weekend,’ he said.