Sign up for FREE now and never miss the top Royal stories again. SUBSCRIBE Invalid email We will use your email address only for sending you newsletters. Please see our Privacy Notice for details of your data protection rights.   Michael Portillo roars with laughter when I ask if he’s in any danger of becoming a national treasure as a result of his decade presenting colourful and popular documentaries about notable rail journeys around the world. Those who remember that notorious “Portillo moment” in 1997, when the Tory MP and national “hate figure” lost his parliamentary seat of Enfield Southgate to Labour amid resounding cheers, know just how far his TV train rides have taken him in terms of public affection. With his vibrant blazers, retina-scorching trousers and flamboyant shirts, and his personable, chatty and endearing presenting style as he unearths hidden historical gems during his travels, he’s certainly moving in the right direction.     “There’s intense competition for national treasure-hood,” he says with a modest laugh. “I think of Ed Balls who went on Strictly Come Dancing and became a proper national treasure overnight. I never think of myself as competing with someone like Ed. But it certainly has been a journey, quite literally.”  At 67, Michael Portillo is a man very much at home in his own skin, a far cry from the somewhat uptight and buttoned-up Right-winger of old.  As for his unique on-screen look, he reveals: “When I left politics, having been repressed in my dark blue suit and tie, there was this spirit within me that was yearning to burst free. It started in the shirts and spread to the jackets, then to the trousers, socks and pocket handkerchiefs, but it certainly has been organic.     “If you went back to the first series, you’d find it relatively monochrome compared with today. Yesterday I saw an orange raincoat and rushed in and bought it. Because we’ve been delayed by Covid this year, we’re shooting our way through October and November and, as all my outer garments are black, people will wonder what has happened.”  Among other things, we’re talking today about a lovely new hardback book collecting some of the most insightful and picturesque trips from a decade of his Great British Rail Journeys – Portillo’s hugely popular and long-running BBC series.  Quite fortuitously, its genesis came when he was asked to guest present an episode of a BBC series called, in those days, Great Railway Journeys, after losing his seat.  He made a poignant and revealing railway trip around Spain, telling the story of his father, a Left-wing academic who fled to the UK after fighting on the losing side in the Spanish Civil War.    “My father had been on one side and he’d had four brothers fighting on the other side. Although my father was dead by then, some of his brothers were still alive,” he recalls. “I don’t know why two of his much younger brothers were on the Right but a further two were simply conscripted. There were two wh

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