Obviously, one of the best moments of my life was seeing Michael Portillo lose his seat in 1997.

I was only 16 then, so had no business staying up all night to follow a General Election, but I did because I was a precocious and annoying brat. I was a member of the Labour Party back then, and invited two of my friends round for a sleepover and 'labour party'.

We planned to stay up all night, eat Hula Hoops and mini sausage rolls and watch the election. Looking back, it's a genuine miracle that I was never bullied at school.

So even though it may have been a delight to see Portillo lose - and to see him lose to such a youthful pipsqueak - I just can't help liking him these days.

Now that he's no longer a Tory politician, but is instead a jolly and excitable chap, bounding around Europe in colourful blazers which would make even Mary Berry jealous, I like him and his Railway Journeys series.

It's hard to keep track of them, though. There are just so many. If you set your TV to record them, within a week the TIVO's memory is full, with warning signs telling you there's no more space because 63,000 episodes have now been recorded.

It's on almost every day, as either Great British or as Great European Railway Journeys. He'll be on BBC2 tootling through the seaside stations of Cornwall, then he's on BBC4 an hour later, traversing frozen Russia.

I selected this episode for review as his Great Railway Journey will shortly be arriving at…Motherwell. Yes, the man with the best job in all of TV found himself having to traipse around Motherwell, lugging Irn Bru crates, climbing into lorries and doing a bit of manual labour.

He starts off in the Tata steelworks in Motherwell, reminding those who denigrate the town that it was once known as Steelopolis, being home to so many steelworks, and it was from Motherwell that the iron for the Forth Road Bridge was sourced, as well as the steel for the rebuilding of the Tay Bridge.

I didn't know any of this, knowing Motherwell only as a stop on the train line or as a place of glum business parks and 60s high rises. Strange that it took an ex-Tory minister, whose pals helped ruin Scottish industry, to tell me of its heritage.

But let's not sully Portillo with that kind of talk. He's in this programme as a traveller, not a Tory.

He then journeys on to Cumbernauld and just as you're wondering what charm that place can possibly hold, he slips on a hi-viz vest and climbs up into an Irn Bru lorry, delivering bottles and collecting the empties from the local shops. Cumbernauld, if you make Irn Bru then I can forgive you anything, even your town centre, frozen in its concrete.

Of course, being a tour of Scotland there had to be a paean to scenery, so Portillo makes a stop at the Falls of Clyde where he speaks to a tour guide who's dolled up in Victorian togs. It's a fancy get-up which is an easy match for Portillo's lemon-hued jacket. We're told that the toffs of the 18th and 19th centuries would visit the Falls as part of their Grand Tour, particularly after Napoleon had made getting to Florence and Rome a bit treacherous.

The magic of this little episode was that it prompted me to view those often-insulted towns in a new light. Motherwell helped build the Forth Road Bridge! Cumbernauld produces Irn Bru! And then, to counter all the noisy steel-making and ginger-fizzing, we also see Scotland as a place of quiet grandeur and beauty. A nice, heart-warming mix.