What is your idea of perfect happiness in Norfolk?

Walking along Mundesley beach. When I was at university in Norwich in the early 1980s I used to drive out there at midnight from time to time and just wander along the beach listening to the waves crashing against the sand. It was somehow therapeutic. And when I was in the middle of the cut and thrust of fighting an election campaign in North Norfolk it was a great place to get some solitude and time to reflect. I really miss it now.

How do you relax in the County?

Norfolk ought to be one of the easiest places to be able to relax but you have to be on the right wavelength to do so. It takes a couple of days to enter the ‘Norfolk zone’. I just love driving through tranquil lanes and picturesque villages and stopping for a stroll when the mood takes me.

With which Norfolk character do you most identify?

I’m going to pick someone from the present – Gillian Shephard. Or Baroness Shephard of Northwold as we must call her. To her friends she is still known as Mrs S. I first met Gillian in the mid 1980s when she was on the County Council and I have to say she put the fear of God into me. She still doesn’t suffer fools gladly, but I’m glad to say I got to know her better a decade later when I was running Politico’s Bookstore in Westminster. She came to the opening and made a real hit with my father. She was then tremendously helpful to me when I got on the approved Conservative candidates list and has been a close confidante ever since. She’s a doughty defender of Norfolk’s interests and has done a huge amount of the county. I am a real fan.

If you weren't talking to us now, what would you be doing?

Probably whoring myself around another part of the nation’s media. Since I left active politics I have built a career as a political pundit. I love doing my fortnightly columns in the EDP and the Daily Telegraph, but my first love is radio. Show me a politician – or ex-politician who doesn’t like the sound of their own voice! I have always enjoyed speaking more than writing. But if I wasn’t doing that I’d be walking my Jack Russell, Gio.

What do you miss most when you leave Norfolk?

The relaxed lifestyle is what I miss most. I used to live in Swanton Abbott, a delightfully quiet village near North Walsham. I will regret to my dying day selling my cottage there. It was a real haven. My favourite time of the year was winter, when we would have a roaring fire and hide away from the world.

How would you spend your ideal day in Norfolk?

I would drive along the coast from Hunstanton to Happisburgh, stopping off for a walk on each beach along the way. Lunch would be from the chip shop by the harbour at Wells, tea at a café in Sheringham and dinner at the superb Jacque Restaurant in Garden Street, Cromer.

What's your earliest Norfolk memory?

I grew up near Saffron Walden in Essex but as kids we used to come to Norfolk for the day very often as my mother grew up at Stibbard, near Fakenham. We’d head to Hunstanton or Wells in the back of my Godmother’s Morris Minor and enjoy the day on the beach before heading home and poking our tongues out of the back window at drivers following behind. Such pleasant children. One day we took our two dogs to Wells. It was the first time they had encountered the sea, but they soon got used to it. Drying them off for the journey home was not an experience I would care to repeat.

In moments of weakness.....

I eat my fifth Mars Bar of the day, or demolish a whole packet of Jaffa cakes.

What would your motto be?

Man tue was man will (it’s a quote by Goethe which means ‘I do as I please’)