In some small way, George Galloway helped me to decide on my future career. As a student, I campaigned for him in the 1987 General Election, when he was elected as an MP for the first time.

Just a few months later, I fought through a scrum of reporters to attend a meeting of the Glasgow Hillhead Labour Party executive committee, where I backed a vote of no confidence in our newly elected member, after he admitted to extra-marital affairs.

If Galloway, then a rising young star of the party, represented politics, I reflected, I wanted no part of it. And besides, the journalists looked like they were having way more fun.

What happened next, taught me three things about "Gorgeous George" that still hold true to this day.

The first is that, if you support him, sooner or later he will let you down. Usually sooner. The second is that, when he’s backed into a corner, he reverts to a peculiar, effete patois that makes him sound like a censorious Victorian patriarch. And the third is that it’s always, always only ever about George.

His victory in the Rochdale by-election will doubtless end the same way as previous "triumphs": prematurely and in disappointment.

Throughout the 1987 campaign I, and my fellow activists, pounded the streets of the constituency and worked into the early hours, stuffing envelopes and manning phone lines. I took time out from studying for my university finals to help fight, tooth, and nail, for each of the 17,958 votes that saw him returned to Westminster.

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