THE MAN hoping to succeed scandal-hit Mark Oaten as Liberal Democrat MP for Winchester has vowed to keep his private life off the front pages.

Martin Tod, a 42-year-old married marketing consultant from Berkshire who won his party's nomination on Saturday, said he wanted to follow in Mr Oaten's footsteps by being a "hard-working constituency MP".

He was asked whether he was prepared for the glare of the media spotlight which exposed Mr Oaten's affair with a gay prostitute, he told the Daily Echo: "I have agreed with my wife Michaela that we are not going to talk about our private lives.

"My private life is private and I am going to keep it that way."

Mr Tod, a Cambridge University graduate, beat four other short-listed hopefuls to win the Lib Dem nomination at a meeting of local party members in Winchester. The vacancy arose following Mr Oaten's announcement in July that he planned to leave the House of Commons.

Mr Tod plans to spend four days a week on his election campaign - even though the next ballot could be as much as four years away. The new candidate's connections to Winchester go back a long way.

His great-great-great-grandfather, Dean Thomas Garnier, features in Winchester Museum as an "anti-muckabite" campaigner who fought to bring a sewage system to Winchester in the 1860s.