It should have been a routine assignment but it quickly escalated.

Michael Heseltine, who was the President of the Board of Trade and senior Tory MP, was due to speak at the Cumbria Centre of the Institute of Directors annual lunch at the Low Wood Hotel in Ambleside so I went along with the business reporter to cover it.

However I soon realised that there might be a bigger story when a team from the BBC, Newsnight as I recall, turned up out of the blue and set up their cameras.

I mean it must be good if a national TV crew just rocks up and I thought it might make a decent tale.

It turned out that it had been leaked that day that the politician was going to make a leadership challenge against the then Prime Minister John Major.

In the preceding years the Heseltine had been a familiar figure on the political landscape and when he faced the gathered press pack and handled the situation with good grace.

However I was surprised that, when the story appeared in the next day’s paper, the leadership challenge was not the main point of the article. I mean it was big news that the bombshell had dropped on our patch.

Having said that the reporter did his job and focussed on the recent battle for control of VSEL which was then a major employer in Barrow-in-Furness, and he did say that he was hotly tipped at the next leader of the party in the intro.

From the North West Evening Mail on Saturday, June 17, 1995.