David Taylor MP

There was a real sadness in the newsroom today as we worked on the breaking story of David Taylor's sudden death.
Some of us here go back quite a few years with David, MP for North West Leicestershire since 1997.

He had a heart attack on Boxing Day while he was visiting Calke Abbey.

The news - and we had to deliver it over the phone to some of his friends and associates - has hit people very hard.

I was a cub reporter when I first met him, back in 1994 when I joined the Coalville Times.

David was a parish and borough councillor then. I'm pretty sure he was working full time too.

That's a lot of politics to squeeze in.

Well, as Oscar Wilde said: "Socialism would be great if it didn't take up so many evenings." I'm paraphrasing.

And, it might not have been Wilde.

But, it's a good line.

When I arrived in Coalville there was much talk among the senior members of the Labour Party about 'Young David'.

I'm not sure how many attempts it took, but he won the seat from the Tories in the landslide of 1997.

I went down to the count at Whitwick leisure centre with the-then editor of the Times, (of Coalville, not London).

A few of us got a little drunk - we weren't covering, we were there for the fun of it all - and I remember being 'shushed' by someone from the Mercury because we were getting a little over-excited as we watched the political map changing locally and nationally.

For the next few years David was a good friend of the paper and was in it all the while doing his job - fighting for a constituent or opening a community centre here or there. You get the idea, MP stuff.

I don't know much about Parliamentary politics. Come to think of it, I don't know too much about the town hall stuff either.

But I could tell David was one of the good ones. I've met some of the bad ones in my time and it's not always down to duck islands and home flipping.

He will be much missed.