If you’ve been missing your regular Gazette dose of Chris Grayling since the election campaign began, fear not – he’s almost certainly coming to a town near you (assuming you live in a marginal constituency).

Indeed, while the justice secretary has yet to be wheeled out to face the national media, he has been wooing local newspapers on a whistle-stop tour of the country.

Since Easter he has: been to a pub in Weymouth (8 April); been grilled by local lawyers in Torquay (9 April); wandered through Woodchester (13 April); ‘hit the campaign trail’ in Thurrock (17 April); ‘made a pit stop’ in Gravesend (18 April); and visited residents in Cleethorpes last week before dropping in to Boston.

Grayling has hailed the ‘extraordinary diversity of activities’ going on in Thurrock, praised ‘exciting’ wind turbines in Grimsby and addressed the pressing issue of a bypass in Boston.

Despite such a busy schedule he is still fighting on the home front, although defending a 16,000 majority in staunchly Tory Epsom and Ewell should not prove too taxing.

The Epsom Guardian has extracted nuggets of personal information about our lord chancellor, including that he is a big Game of Thrones (pictured) fan and suffers from a fear of snakes.

Intriguingly, his motto in life is ‘if you don’t ask, you don’t get’. Food for thought for lawyers if he returns to the Ministry of Justice after 7 May.

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