Michael Portillo, former Conservative MP and broadcaster, shares funny and poignant stories from his life in his stand-up show 'A Life of Two Halves'.
Michael Portillo is coming to the Congress Theatre on Tuesday 24 November, with the show starting at 7:30pm. He's calling it A Life of Two Halves, and it's a bit of a retrospective that pulls together the different versions of him most of us know from the telly.
For a start, there's the political side. He was the Conservative MP for Kensington and Chelsea and served as a Secretary of State under Margaret Thatcher, and he even ran for the leadership of the Conservative Party. Then there's the moment that stuck in the national memory: losing his seat in one of the most famous results in British political history. He talks about that, and about Thatcher herself, and about the decay of political power.
But the other half of the story is the one he's more known for now. He's become one of the country's favourite broadcasters, sparring with the likes of Diane Abbott and Andrew O'Neill and travelling the world's greatest railways. The show draws on that, but it goes back further than the trains. He talks about his father's experiences of the Spanish Civil War and his escape to England, where he and Michael's mother met while looking after refugee children. That family history sits alongside his more recent journeys across Spain, the USA, India and beyond.
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So it's a mix of the public life — the MP and the broadcaster — and the personal stuff that doesn't usually make the news. He's billed it as funny, insightful and poignant, and it sounds like it covers a lot of ground in one night. Tickets are £64.97, which includes the booking fee, and the show runs at the Congress Theatre on Tuesday 24 November at 7:30pm.
