Matthew Parris

Parris grew up in South Africa and several other countries where his British father was working at the time. After obtaining a degree in law from Clare College, Cambridge, and studying Law at Yale University, he worked for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, then served as the Conservative Member of Parliament for West Derbyshire from 1979, leaving in 1986 to pursue a career in journalism. He has weekly columns in The Times newspaper and The Spectator magazine.

Parris announced he was gay in one of his weekly newspaper columns. In a live interview on Newsnight during the Ron Davies scandal of 1998, he famously told interviewer Jeremy Paxman that there were two gay members of the current Labour Cabinet, one allegedly being Peter Mandelson.

Parris is also a television presenter and pundit. As an MP he took part in a documentary requiring him to live for a week on the social security payments awarded by the Conservative goverment for which he was an MP. The experiment came to an embarrassing end when he ran out of money for the electricity meter. He left Parliament specifically to take over as host of ITV's Weekend World. He has also appeared on Have I Got News For You.

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