Personal Life
Parris "came out as a homosexual in a late-night debate in the Commons in 1984 but, by his own admission, nobody noticed." He later announced he was gay in one of his weekly newspaper columns. In a live interview on Newsnight during the Ron Davies scandal of 1998, he famously told interviewer Jeremy Paxman that there were two gay members of the then current Labour Cabinet, one being Peter Mandelson. He has stated that there are between thirty and sixty unannounced gay members of the UK parliament. In August 2010, in a list compiled by the Independent on Sunday, Parris was voted the 49th most influential LGBT person in the United Kingdom.
In August 2006, Parris entered into a civil partnership with his long-term partner, Julian Glover, a speech writer for David Cameron and a former political journalist at The Guardian. At the time of their partnership, they had been together for eleven years.
Parris was a keen marathon runner, taking part in the London event several times. His personal best was 2:32:57 which he recorded at the age of 34. He decided he wanted to go out on top and arguing that serious running is not good for health, he stopped running marathons after that. No British MP – sitting or retired – had equalled Parris's marathon timing in the 20th century.
He owns homes in Spain, Derbyshire, and the Docklands of east London. He is the honorary patron of Clare Politics, a student-run politics society at his alma mater, Clare College, Cambridge.
Read more about this topic: Matthew Parris
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