Early Life and Career
Born Michael Denzil Portillo in Bushey, Hertfordshire, England, Portillo took the name Xavier at confirmation. His father was an exiled Spanish republican, Luis Gabriel Portillo (1907–1993). His mother is Cora (née Blyth); her father was John Blyth, a prosperous linen mill owner from Kirkcaldy. An early brush with fame came in 1961 at the age of 8, when Portillo starred in a television advertisement for Ribena, a blackcurrant cordial drink. He was educated at Stanburn Primary School in Stanmore, Middlesex, and Harrow County School for Boys and then won a scholarship to Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he came under the influence of Maurice Cowling.
Portillo graduated in 1975 with a first-class degree in history, and after a brief stint with Ocean Transport and Trading Co., a freight firm, he joined the Conservative Research Department in 1976. Following the Conservative victory in 1979 he became a government adviser. He left to work for Kerr-McGee Oil from 1981–1983 and fought his first, unsuccessful, election in the 1983 general election, in the Labour-held seat of Birmingham Perry Barr, losing against Jeff Rooker.
Portillo has been married to Carolyn Eadie since 1982.
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