York council leader James Alexander has never met his real father. He tells STEPHEN LEWIS why.

AN EMAIL pinged into my inbox a couple of weeks ago. It was from James Alexander.

Would I be interested in talking to him about the fact he's never met his father? And that his name as a boy wasn't Alexander at all, but Glasgow?

"Alexander is my adopted name," he wrote. "Just wondered if you were interested in a more personal piece about families and single parent families in particular? I would like to think I have set an example for some single parent families that they and their children are not worthless and if I say something more publicly hopefully that message can get across..."

He may be young to be a council leader - just 32 - but James Alexander is a politician to his fingertips.

So cynics might at this point be thinking he was desperate for some positive coverage after the public relations disaster that is Lendal Bridge and Coppergate

To be fair to James, however, his email arrived several days before the explosive adjudicator's decision on the Coppergate and Lendal Bridge traffic restrictions: so that wasn't it.

Nevertheless, the first question I asked him when we sat down at West Offices was the obvious one: why was he suddenly so keen to talk about his childhood?

"I don't often talk about personal stuff much," he said. "But there were a few things..."

One influence was Caroline Flint, the 52-year-old Labour MP and former Europe Minister who recently spoke out about how she had never attempted to track down her biological father because she wanted to "get on with my own life". Another was Keith Wakefield, the leader of Leeds City Council, who spoke out a year ago about his own difficult childhood.

But his main reason for speaking out now, Coun Alexander insisted, was that he hoped by his own example to show children from disadvantaged or broken families that they can 'get on and do things'. "Not that I'm saying I'm perfect," he said hastily. "But I'm in a position of responsibility..."

His real father's name is Tony Brooks, or Brookes - he's not even sure of the exact spelling. "His mother was a Spanish gypsy, his father was Irish," James said. Tony was an electrician for Kensington Council when he met James's mother, Jill Glasgow. "They went to the same pubs in Hammersmith." They never married, however - and James never met him.

One of his earliest memories is of his mother carrying him up a flight of steps to their one-bed flat in a tower block in the Edward Woods estate in Hammersmith.

"You've never seen such segregation between rich and poor," he said. "On one side of the road was our tower block. It was a poor council estate, with a high crime rate and all sorts gong on. And across the road £3 million houses and mansions in Holland Park."

He and his mum moved to a 2-bed housing association flat on the top floor of a semi in Shepherd's Bush when he was a few years old. "The couple downstairs had a huge garden that was only for the use of their dog," he said. "I was scared of the dog! My mum found it difficult that I couldn't have a garden yet the downstairs dog was allowed one."

What he mainly remembers, however, was his mum's struggles as a single parent to bring him up. She had worked as a GPO telephonist, but gave that up when James was born, and did cleaning jobs instead.

"I used to help out when I was younger," he said. "I remember going to rich people's houses in Richmond, hoovering and cleaning."

That had a big impact on the development of his later political views, he said. "My mother was a good person, and she always struggled. I thought: 'she's not a bad person, this is not fair.'" It left him with a burning sense of social injustice, he said. "I wanted to live in a place where hard work and talent decided what you do in life, not where you are born."

He never really wondered about why he didn't have a father like other children. At primary school one day, they learned the story of Jesus. "I remember telling the class that I didn't have a father, therefore I must be like Jesus. My mum had to explain to me what had happened to me with my father. Before that I had never, ever thought about him."

A few years later, when he was about ten, he was sitting with his mum in what might have been a working men's club in Hammersmith. "She said 'your real dad is over there. Do you want to talk to him?' I was playing Mario Land on the gameboy, and I said 'no, I want to carry on playing'."

By that time, his mum had met Joe Alexander, the man who was to adopt him and give him his name. He came to live with James and his mum, and soon James had a younger brother, Jordan.

All four lived in the cramped two-bed flat until James was 17. There was no central heating, and he remembers as a boy firing off letters to MPs describing the cold and the damp and the condensation. Invariably they'd write back saying 'I'm not your MP'. "I was 11 or 12. I didn't know what I was doing."

When he was 17, the family moved to a larger, three-bed flat near the Queens Park Rangers ground in Loftus Road and James - who had gone to school at Burlington Danes School in Shepherd's Bush - won a scholarship to do his A-levels at Cardinal Vaughan School on Holland Road, one of the top state schools in London.

He later found out that his own father had gone there in the days when it was still a private school. "He won a scholarship, too. I'm told he was very smart but didn't want to apply himself academically."

No danger of that in James' case. He wanted to get into politics. His school encouraged him to apply for work experience placements and he got them - at the Treasury, the DTI, and Conservative Party HQ. "I was there for five weeks over the summer, working in the research department." He even had an interview to become William Hague's PA. "Luckily I didn't get the job. It would have been difficult! I was already a card-carrying member of the Labour Party."

Instead, he came to the University of York to study politics and economic history. The rest, as they say, is history...

And his father? Is he ever tempted to try to contact him?

No, he says. "There is curiosity. And I have always wondered whether he will come to look for me. He suffers from a heat condition, and I'm a carrier for that condition. I've always thought that might happen, but it hasn't."

And if he did try to get in touch, would James want to see him? "I don't know. I genuinely don't feel that interested. Sometimes mum says that the way I act or things that I do are similar to him. I have a genetic link with him. But my mum brought me up."


Drive is all you need to get lucky

There is a saying that 'luck is a skill', says James Alexander. He's not sure he entirely agrees. He feels he's the only one in his family who has had any real luck, he says.

His granddad on his mother's side was George Glasgow, an engineer. "He designed some safety feature for London Transport, for escalators - they were made to lock is something happened. The company he worked for made a lot of money. He got ****** all." George later ran a bookies. "His business partner ran off with the money. That's the story of my family."

That, and his own early upbringing in a struggling, single-parent family may account for some of his own drive. The children of single parents are often written off, he says. "There's a level of low expectation."

When he was at primary school, he remembers his mum being so proud of how well he was doing.Sshe instilled in him a desire to prove himself, he says. "I've got a sense that I've got to try to be the best."

As a young child, he was for a while a successful child model. He appeared in TV ads, music videos, in the pages of magazines such as Bella. He was even down to the last few children from about 250 to be the Milky Bar Kid. His modelling career was "a big confidence boost."

It came to an end when he was eight, because he had put on weight. Didn't that knock his confidence? "My mum didn't tell me it was because I had put on weight."

After school, determined to break into politics, he got those work experience placements at the Treasury, the DTI, Conservative Party HQ, and even at News International. "I just wrote off letters to anybody and everybody," he says.

He then did his degree in politics and economic history in York.

His first proper job on graduating was as campaign manager for the Hammersmith and Fulham Labour Party, running the local election campaign of 2006. He then got a job, still in London, with the DeHavilland political monitoring service.

After the excitement of running a political campaign ("It was 24 hours a day: I don't know anyone in that position who hasn't slept on an office floor in the cold"), he felt it wasn't for him, however.

So he came back to York, worked at Jessops for a while, was selected as a Labour candidate for Holgate ward - and now, a few years later, is leader of the city council.

Luck? Or skill? Or sheer, bloody-minded ambition? Probably a bit of all three...