Frances is the admirable secretary in our non-party constituency office in Tatton.

On the day before The Mirror delivered its 'scoop' about legal fees, she was wondering aloud why everything had gone so quiet.

And then the storm broke.

I remember driving up from London, much as I had on the first day of the campaign and for yet another do-or-die news conference in Tatton, and thinking that life would be so much easier if I belonged to a regular political party.

Frances has since promised that she will never again reflect on the tranquillity of things.

The news conference itself was tough and tumultuous but fair - with the exception perhaps of a single hooligan, of uncertain journalistic provenance, who obviously thought that I could be intimidated.

He was wrong. I have met some world class intimidators in my time, and he was not in their league.

At the back of the crowded room I was pleased to see Peter McDowell, agent for the Conservatives in Tatton.

He was most welcome and always will be. He has now seen the press pack in full cry against two successive Members of Parliament.

Of the two, Neil Hamilton's was without a doubt the greater ordeal.

I hope that Mr McDowell writes his memoirs one day. I certainly would rush out to buy a copy.

All that mattered really, in the end, was the public response - the reaction of the people themselves.

I do not have a political party but I have something at least as powerful - a league of decent people.

According to the conventions of politics I suppose that it is unwise for a sitting MP to submit himself, between elections, to the judgement of his constituents.

But it is also democratic.

It was at this point that I made my only mistake, which was linguistic. I told them that if I had lost their confidence, I would reconsider my position. That was 'politico-speak'. I should have said, more plainly, that I would quit.

It turned out that I need not have bothered.

The response was both humbling and overwhelming. I received 700 messages urging me to stay and 7 wishing me to go.

A constituent rushed across to me the next day and said: 'Don't you dare quit'.

And another wrote: 'We are not going to allow you to give us up.'

What was specially touching was that these people included many who had voted for Mr Hamilton last time.

Among these was a splendid character who had given me such a roasting on the doorstep in April that I had immediately drawn the day's campaigning to an end.

(Manchester United were on TV at the time, most unusually they were losing, and I did not wish their defeat to result in mine.)

I regret that I have not had time to thank all the well-wishers - and there have been at least as many outside as inside the constituency.

I hope that people will forgive me for this.

But there are simply not enough hours in the day to do all that I would wish to do, and the rest of the business besides.

Then there was the not-so-trivial matter of £9,400. I paid it out of my own savings, not because I felt obliged to, but because it would draw a line under the episode, and send a useful signal of independence.

The Mirror actually did me a favour. Last year, like other members of the Halifax Building Society, I had been asked to vote on whether it should turn itself into a bank.

The reward for this would be a windfall of shares.

Typically I was one of the two percent who had voted against. I had taken the windfall but had not known what to do with it.

The politics of Tatton had solved that problem, as it has solved so many problems (including those of its newspaper editors, struggling during a thin news time for a lead story. I sometimes wonder how they will ever cope, after this Parliament, with being just an ordinary constituency.)

As a result of it all I am poorer financially, but richer in friends and experience.

There is no problem of fund-raising here, rather, I suppose, of fund lowering.

(I am actually trying to stop people sending me money).

So far we have received more than £500 in unsolicited contributions, from inside and outside the constituency.

With the permission of the donors, we have opened a special account in the event of a legal challenge which I do not expect.

At the end of this Parliament any remaining funds will be distributed to local charities.

The question remaining, of course, is where the story of the legal fees came from in the first place.

My own theory is that the idea of an Independent may be so novel as to make some people uncomfortable.

Frankly, I don't know which people.

On 'Breakfast with Frost' last Sunday, I was intrigued to hear Alan Duncan (a Hague strategist) surmise that by the end of this Parliament I would have to declare my true colours as a Conservative, Labour or Liberal Democrat.

But of course there is always another category, which is none of the above. I was also gratified to receive the personal assurance of Alastair Campbell, the Prime Minister's press secretary, that The Mirror's story had not come from them.

They had no interest in damaging me politically.

I needed to hear that. And of course I believe him. The strangest thing of all was, as I recall it, my New Year's resolution that 1998 was supposed to be my year of living inconspicuously.

Welcome to the obscurity of a regular back-bencher!

Converted for the new archive on 13 March 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.