ÌÇÐÄVlog

Alumnus to be proud of no. 52 has to be this week's unluckiest politician, his career possibly finished by allegations that he has merely been doing to a named individual what his government has been doing to the entire country for the past 17 years.

Rod Richards - until last weekend the only Welsh-speaking member of the Government and possessor in large parts of his native country of popularity levels previously only associated with other heroes-of-the-Welsh-people like Edward I, Will Carling and the pre-war membership of the Coal-owners Federation - is also the first of this Parliament's crop of Tory sex-scandal victims to have graduated from the University of Wales (four of the previous nine victims went to Cambridge).

After something of a false start at Aberystwyth University, which he left after a year, and a spell on a short-term commission in the Royal Marines, Mr Richards went to Swansea, where he obtained a first in economics.