JOURNALIST Paul Goodman became the Conservative MP for Wycombe at 3.15am on Friday, beating bitterly disappointed local Labour man Chauhdry Shafique in what became a two horse race.

The whole of Buckinghamshire stayed blue, with Conservative MPs in Beaconsfield, (Dominic Grieve), Chesham and Amersham (Cheryl Gillan), Aylesbury (David Lidington) and Buckingham (John Bercow) holding their seats.

Mr Goodman, Mr Lidington and Mr Bercow had increased majorities.

Mr Goodman, who was the Daily Telegraph's comment editor, had a majority of 3,168. Former MP Sir Ray Whitney's majority in the 1997 Tory disaster was 2,307, a drop of about 14,000 from 1992.

The Labour Party in Wycombe had almost convinced itself it could win for the first time since the post-war election of 1945.

Labour's party headquarters, Millbank, sent in a couple of ministers to jolly the troops in the election run up.

When the ballot papers started tumbling on to the tables in Wycombe Sports Centre after the polls closed at 10pm, Mr Goodman, who is normally careful of what he says, was even more guarded, while his usually more ebullient agent Sue Hynard walked around looking worried.

Labour on the other hand were smiling, though the fact that they kept saying they thought the poll would go to a recount was an indication they were not totally confident.

Thursday was election day both for parliament and for the county council, so before the parliamentary count could start different voting papers had to be sorted. Actual counting did not start until about 1.45 am.

Uncounted papers put into wire baskets for each of the six candidates and the atmosphere started to change.

Did Mr Goodman's baskets contain more papers? Possibly. It still seemed on a knife edge.

The papers were counted into bundles and stacked in lines and gradually it became more and more obvious that Mr Goodman was ahead and the only thing in doubt was the majority.

The soon-to-be MP started to look quite perky, while Labour heads were shaking and their smiles disappeared.

After the result was declared by acting returning officer Richard Cummins, Mr Goodman said he wanted to be a good constituency MP and serve the whole community and stressed his belief in the One Nation Conservatism of Benjamin Disraeli.

Paul Goodman: then and now

Paul Goodman is 41 and married to Fiona, a solicitor.

He was born in London in 1959, and educated at Cranleigh School, Surrey, and York University, where he read English Literature.

Since then, he has worked in public relations for the Rt Hon Tom King MP, who was then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, as a researcher, and is currently employed as a journalist by the Daily Telegraph.

Until February, he was comment editor of the Daily Telegraph. Prior to that, he worked as a reporter for the Sunday Telegraph and previously for the Catholic Herald.

He was selected as the Conservative candidate for Wycombe on July 14 last year.

He currently lives in High Wycombe and London.