After a well-received show last year, respected broadcaster and former politician Michael (Denzil Xavier) Portillo  is returning to the Brindley on Monday 23 October with Life: A Game of Two Halves.

It took Portillo little more than ten years to get a seat in the Commons and then rise in power to where he was a favoured leader of his party and possible future PM. track record like that suggests many a privileged rich and famous friends, with little or no understanding or care for the ordinary citizen.

However, since leaving The Hours Michael endeared himself to many with his respect for solid workmanship and care for the underprivileged.

His father Luis Gabriel Portillo Pérez (18 March 1907 – 1993) was a Spanish professor, left-wing politician and writer who lived in exile in the United Kingdom.

A historian at heart, Michael used a Victorian railway guide to take millions of viewers on a historical voyage of discovery throughout the UK, Ireland the USA and Europe.

Since 2003, Portillo has appeared as a regular in the BBC weekly political discussion programme This Week with Andrew Neil, and, until September 2010, Labour MP Diane Abbott.

Portillo has known Abbott for many years: they both attended schools in the London Borough of Harrow, and both were in a joint school production of Romeo and Juliet, though not in the title roles.

Later, while still at school, Portillo cast Abbott in a film version of Macbeth, but the film was never completed.

Listen to his extraordinary story and then feel free to question him about it in a post show question and answers sessions. Last time in Runcorn  he revealed, perhaps for the first time in public, his views of Brexit.

Tickets are £18.50, £17.50 from http://www.thebrindley.org.ukand the box office on 0151 907 8360.