It's easy to forget that behind the gawky, good-natured butt-of-all-jokes figure that is the TV construct of former Montgomeryshire MP, Lembit Opik, there is actually a much different, real, and very raw human being.
While his stoic but 'gis-a-job' appearance on Have I Got News For You literally hours after his shock general election defeat has already become a TV classic (his seat fell after a mathematically implausible 13.2% swing to the Conservatives), at the time he was pluckily trying to keep his composure. "I was absolutely stunned, devastated," he says, speaking about the experience for only the first time. "I didn't have a plan B. I didn't go out for about three weeks; I stayed at home just staring at the walls. By the time I'd plucked up the courage to reply to emails, about 1,200 had built up."
Somewhere among them was an email from this magazine requesting an interview. For while most will know him as MP-come-raconteur-come-Cheeky-Girl dater, Opik was a successful HR professional, leaving Procter & Gamble in 1997 (after his first Commons victory) having spent seven years there, reaching global HR training manager. By the time he'd spotted this email, conversed and finally agreed to meet, the media rumour-mill was hotly tipping him for a spot (and rumoured £80,000 pay check) on I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here - "my income dropped 80% overnight," he says on the matter, with a knowing twinkle, "but four-fifths of my outgoings didn't disappear". And so, again, he is back on our screens, reinforcing his clumsy, funny, oddball profile in-between battling Bush Tucker Trails. But I also hope viewers will see in Opik what I saw of him in this last interview before going Down Under. Unquestionably, he is a people person. And much misunderstood. And, despite his love of politics, Opik is man whose first love is HR, and it's this, not the telly, that he really wants to get back into.
"I was far more successful and content applying my training and development skills with staff at P&G than I ever was at politics," he critiques. "I wish I'd never left; I just couldn't do that and be an MP at the same time. If they ever wanted me back, I'd be happy to go there." It's a jolting revelation. "It wasn't that I'd had enough of HR, but politics tempted me away," he says. "I made a small impact on a large company's modus operandi by rooting executive decision-making around cultural values," he says, citing the likes of Stephen Covey as an inspiration. "If I'd have stayed I think I'd have made a great deal of difference."
Opik joined P&G in advertising, but says he quickly realised what he did was "urgent but not important". He laughs: "I asked for a transfer to HR - colleagues thought it was career suicide. But HR created a new role for me, to completely overhaul training to create a holistic character-based company."
It's only when he contrasts his time at P&G with Parliament that you begin to understand why Opik believes his HR life had far more impact than his time at the Palace of Westminster, for which he has little praise. "It was less results-orientated and very inefficient," he exclaims. "Its decision-making process is stupendously slow; P&G was slow, but at least it got there. If Parliament made consumer goods, it would be bankrupt within a year."
Opik's irritations are real. At P&G he worked hard (in one 36-hour period, setting up training programmes in China, he worked 30 of them without sleep), but at least he got things done. At Westminster, Opik was also a workaholic ("It's ironic in its hypocrisy that Parliament tells others they can only work 48 hours a week, but I was doing 90"), clocking up above-average attendance in debates and votes, and for tabling written questions, according to theyworkforyou.com. But looking back, he feels it was all in vain. "It was a frustrating place," he concludes. "You could win an argument, based on hard facts, but then you would lose a parliamentary vote."
Until 2007 Opik was Lib Dem spokesman for business, enterprise and regulatory reform, and this ex-HR professional was firmly on the side of anything which made it easier for HRDs in the outside world to create jobs without burdening red-tape. And, having taken his own sudden unemployment badly ("my only regular income is a column for the Daily Star"), Opik is even more critical of Parliament's inability to render it easy for businesses to create employment. "Business only ever wants less regulation and more predictability," he says. "Part of government's delusion is that if it passes a law, it solves a problem, but it doesn't see the bigger picture."
Given his views one might be forgiven for wondering why he was so upset to lose his seat. "I definitely think there's some serendipity at play here ... now, I recognise I wasn't going to learn anything new by being an MP for another five years; perhaps it's been a blessing. My life is certainly less lucrative, but it's less stressful too. I've got options." So is going back into HR a serious option, given he's also planning to run for mayor if selected as the Lib Dem candidate? "The mayoralty race is 18 months off yet," he says, dismissing this as a distraction. "I would love to get back into the training and development world."
Perhaps a return to HR could both satisfy his need to feel valued and return him to something he genuinely feels he is good at. "Nothing would please me more than to be able to mentor, train trainers and then move on," he says. "They say a week is a long time in politics, so a month in HR must be a lifetime. But at least you can get so much more done and derive much greater satisfaction."
Opik reveals he is writing a training book now and it's a market to which he has given considerable thought: "The training and development world wants ongoing income streams, so it has a self interest in keeping you tied in," he observes. "I don't subscribe to this. Companies need to be dependent on themselves. My overriding objective would be to be able to give them tools they need so I can move on. At Procter I empowered people to run stuff without me. I have a ruthless focused way to get learning to the trainers."
As Opik braves eating kangaroo testicles, or whatever other unpleasant fate awaits him in the 'I'm a Celebrity ...' jungle, doubtless none of his fellow celebrities will hear about his love for HR and his desire to work in training again - not when there are Cheeky Girls to talk about.
"My call to life is a narrative of some sort and my narrative is people," he says. "HR is my home; I feel comfortable with HR people. HRDs share a creed about caring, seeing the best not worst in people. Nothing pleases HR more than seeing people succeed, and I share this sentiment."
Detractors will argue a long stint on the reality show could yet tempt him to take his career down a different path, but I sense not. He's using it to pay the bills and wants the freedom to return to his full passion. As he shamelessly says: "Tell your readers I'm available."
Perhaps Guardian arts reviewer Paul Fleckney best sums Opik up when he reviewed his stand-up routine at London's Backstage Comedy Club this year: "You could sense confidence, lucidity, composure, sharpness." He's bang on. With his MP days behind him, surely it would be a waste not to rekindle these skills in the HR space?
OPIK IN A MINUTE
Born: 2 March 1965, Bangor Northern Ireland
Education: University of Bristol
Worked: Procter & Gamble (1988-97)
Member of Parliament: 1997-2010
Political offices: Leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats (2001-07); Lib
Dem spokesman for Northern Ireland 2003-07)
Did you know? Lembit Opik is almost one letter short of being an anagram
of 'I like to be MP'.
