When Michael Portillo walked out of his front door yesterday morning to face the press, there was no hint that he was about to throw his hat into the political ring once more.
Yet a few hours after he revealed in a London Times interview that he had "some homosexual experiences" when he was a student at Cambridge, Mr Portillo announced he was putting his name forward for the late Alan Clark's seat.
His decision was hardly surprising and his statement was typically confident. "I haven't found this a difficult decision," it said, "as to contest Kensington and Chelsea would be a great privilege for any Conservative."
The Conservative leader, Mr William Hague, shrewdly observed: "It is a very difficult time for Michael Portillo, I think it is essentially a private matter for him. It doesn't in any way change my belief that we want him back in the House of Commons, we want him back in more active politics."
Mr Hague is walking a political tightrope over Mr Portillo's ambitions. He must not be seen as apprehensive about his possible return to the Commons, but if Mr Hague's lacklustre performance continues, Mr Portillo would be an obvious challenger for the leadership.
On the other hand, bringing Mr Portillo back to the heart of the Tory party would mean the prospective MP could not absolve himself of responsibility should the Tories perform badly in the next general election. The timing of Mr Portillo's revelation about his student days, against the backdrop of years of rumour and innuendo about his sex life, may have been of his choosing. It is much more likely that realising it had a bombshell of a story on its hands, the Times brought forward its publication which was originally intended to coincide with the start of the Conservative Party conference next month.
Nonetheless, Mr Portillo was prepared. He would not attempt to return to political life dogged by "vile and false rumours", he told reporters. Moreover, if he had read an interview about someone with a gay past, he would say "so what" and he hoped that would be everyone else's reaction too.
Adopting a "so what" attitude, Mr Portillo has thrown down a challenge to the "blue rinse" set of the Conservative constituency association in Kensington and Chelsea to accept him, warts and all.
But he is also asking the rest of the Tory party, which has an older age profile than Labour, to do what Labour did a long time ago.
The Culture Secretary, Mr Chris Smith, stood up at a staunchly heterosexual, male-dominated Labour rally in the north of England in 1984 to announce that he was gay and it didn't hamper his rise up the political ladder.
Similarly, the Agriculture Minister, Mr Nick Brown, announced he was gay last year and he joins up to a dozen gay MPs at Westminster, including Mr Peter Mandelson and Mr Stephen Twigg, the MP who ousted Mr Portillo from his seat in the Labour landslide of 1997. By admitting to his homosexual past on his own terms, Mr Portillo has done himself a few favours. Consider the lack of sympathy shown to the former Welsh Secretary, Mr Ron Davies, who admitted his bisexuality after the "incident" on Clapham Common. The press hounded Mr Davies because it sensed he was not telling the whole story, whereas the only real suspicion about Mr Portillo's statement is its timing.
Tories at Westminster have expressed their support for Mr Portillo. The former Foreign Secretary, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, predicted that "people will not be affected by this", while the former party chairman, Mr Chris Patten, said of the Times interview: "I think that Michael was asked an offensive question to which he gave a disarmingly honest reply." Mr Portillo's immediate challenge is in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.