Stuart Davies recalls fighting an earlier Boris election

* Stuart Davies's picture of a young Boris Johnson fighting the 1997 general election in Llangollen,

For Llangollen mayor and county councillor Stuart Davies reflects on his connections with newly-elected Prime Minister Boris Johnson

* Stuart Davies.

People will have heard of me as the old man who asked Theresa May, “Prime Minister, why don't you resign?” 

But I was also the media officer for Boris Johnson in Clwyd South in the ‘97 general election. His first bash at becoming an MP.

It was a forlorn task in those days fighting a safe Labour seat with a majority of around 14,000! 

Boris famously said afterwards he “fought Clwyd South and Clwyd South fought back”.

Twenty-two years later, however, the Boris Bounce has finally prevailed. Clwyd South has turned blue! 

We have kept in touch over the years, he has the master politician's knack of remembering faces and names and when we saw him in Abergele in North Wales this year he remembered us, even our names! I was wearing the rosette that I wore back in '97 with his name on it.

What most people don't remember is that in '97 I chucked my hat in the ring to be the candidate for Clwyd South as well. 

There was one other candidate if I remember correctly as well as the blonde mop head. I got through to the shoot-off with Boris. It was no contest, with the then chairman of Clwyd South, Ian Reynolds, famously saying afterwards, "We have a future Prime Minister here as our candidate."

We got on with the job and I accompanied Boris on the stump as his media officer.

I got to know him well travelling across the constituency and people ask me what he is really like, to which I reply, he was just as you see him now. 

However, underneath all that funniness is a razor-sharp intellectual mind. He was and is from what I can see from his time as Mayor of London, a superb chooser of staff and delegater. He fills people with confidence and gives them freedom to carry out their job.

He also has that knack of catching your eye and giving you the impression that you and he are a team. 

One last anecdote. I was talking to him a few years ago and recounted the tale of taking him to Brymbo Conservative Club near Wrexham.  

I showed him where I had worked in the Loco Shed at Brymbo Steel. It was still standing although the steelworks had been shut for a while. He said, I vividly remember, that he still had the tie from the Conservative Club.