WINCHESTER MP Mark Oaten said he was "happier now than I have been for ages" in the wake of his forced resignation from the party's front bench after revelations of his affair with a male prostitute.
Mr Oaten has written a film for BBC2's Newsnight, in which he interviewed a psychiatrist, a journalist and another MP caught up in a scandal in a bid to find out why politicians like him "come off the rails". In it, he says that he felt "a sense of relief" following his exposure and believed he may have "pressed some kind of self-destruct button" in order to escape the pressures of his job as home affairs spokesman for the Liberal Democrats.
Continued involvement in front-line political life was "like a drug addiction", because he knew it was not good for him but was unable to stop, he said.
Mr Oaten has written an essay for a national Sunday newspaper and appeared in a reality TV show following MPs trying to lose weight, while his wife Belinda discussed the impact of her husband's behaviour in a glossy magazine.
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