Croydon voters will be able to relive one of the tightest general election contests in the country when MP Gavin Barwell's campaign memoir, "How to Win a Marginal Seat: My Year Fighting For My Political Life", is published later this month.

The Conservative MP's literary foray gives readers a first-hand account of his close-fought battle for re-election in Croydon Central last May - a contest in which he defeated Labour challenger Sarah Jones by just 165 votes.

RELATED: Croydon Central MP Gavin Barwell to tell tale of close-fought election battle against Labour challenger Sarah Jones in campaign book

The Croydon Guardian got its hands on a copy of the book ahead of its publication on March 17 - here are seven things we learned from Mr Barwell's tales of the campaign trail:

He tried to calm down on Twitter after one of his best friends called him an "argumentative twat"

In the book Mr Barwell admits his "relish" in getting into heated debates with his opponents on Twitter: "That wasn’t work – it was fun".

But he reveals that during the election campaign he tried to "rein in my natural instinct" to wade into online political punch-ups, after a blunt observation from one of his closest pals.

He writes: "One of my best friends, Pete, did me a real favour when he said to me one night that he really didn’t like the Gavin Barwell he followed on Twitter (I think the phrase he used was ‘argumentative twat’)".

However, such restraint has not always been possible for Mr Barwell since the election.

His motivational song on the campaign trail was Waves by Dutch singer Mr Probz

Describing the "gruelling" schedule of canvassing voters in Croydon Central, Mr Barwell writes: "As I drove around the constituency, I kept playing the song ‘Waves’ by Mr Probz. It starts with the lines: ‘My face above the water / My feet can’t touch the ground.’

"It pretty much summed up how I felt."

Mr Barwell does not specify whether he was listening to 2014's chart-topping Robin Schulz remix of Waves, or the 2013 original. Both have been included here for the sake of accuracy.

 

Councillor Phil Thomas volunteers for the Republican Party on his holidays in the US

Mr Barwell describes Selsdon and Ballards Conservative councillor - who recently prompted a Tory walkout of the council chamber after being accused of "showing disrespect" to the Mayor of Croydon - as a "fiery character" and "gifted and incredibly committed grass-roots campaigner".

He also reveals that Mr Thomas does not limit his political activity to Croydon: "When he holidays in the US he often contacts the local Republican Party office to see if they want any help."

The Croydon Guardian has tried to contact Cllr Thomas to ask who he is supporting in the race to become Republican presidential nominee.

He thinks of his former parliamentary assistant Mario Creatura as Robin - and himself as Batman

The MP has fond words for his former employee, also a Conservative councillor and "one of our most dedicated activists".

Of Mr Creatura he writes: "Cruelly labelled my ‘gobby factotum’ by our opponents, I like to think of him as the Boy Wonder to my Caped Crusader."

Perhaps Mr Barwell could have won a larger majority than 165 if he had used this leaflet:

Your Local Guardian:

But there was some "creative tension" with Conservative leader Tim Pollard

While planning the launch event of his campaign at Fairfield Halls, Mr Barwell asked Cllr Pollard to script him a short video that would play at the start of the evening, to set out "who I am and what motivates me".

But this act of delegation appears to have backfired after Mr Barwell was forced to make some changes to the script.

RELATED: 'Physically and psychologically gruelling': Croydon Central MP Gavin Barwell to publish campaign memoir next month

He writes: "After he’d read my redraft he called me up. He sounded rather cross. I apologised for making lots of amendments, but said that given this video was about me and what motivates me, the language needed to be mine.

"Tim countered that what I had written was way too long, that I didn’t know the first thing about writing video scripts and that if I wanted it to be in my words maybe I shouldn’t have asked him to do it in the first place."

In fine diplomatic fashion, Mr Barwell concludes hopefully that "the end result benefited from this creative tension". But then...

He crashed his car on election day - and damaged the Pollards' car

Pulling into the car park of Addington Harvester on May 7 at the end of a bitterly-fought campaign, Mr Barwell could be forgiven for being a little bit distracted.

So distracted, it seems, that he managed to scrape the car next to him as he was parking.

Your Local Guardian:

The Harvester in Addington

He writes: "I was furious with myself. Now, when I should be briefing our team leaders I was going to have to wander round the pub to find whose car I had damaged."

It turned out the damaged car belonged to Helen Pollard, a Croydon Conservative councillor and wife of group leader Tim Pollard.

Luckily for the nervous candidate, she refused to let "creative tensions" or talk of insurance payouts get in the way of the task at hand: "She told me not to worry about it and we sorted it all out once the election was out of the way."

He is a fan of Theodore Roosevelt

The epigraph to Mr Barwell's memoir is a famous passage from the former US President's speech "Citizenship in a Republic", delivered at the Sorbonne in Paris on April 23, 1910.

It begins: "The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood."

The passage serves as a poetic expression of the principle that it is better to try and fail than never try at all, and Mr Barwell is not the first to apply Mr Roosevelt's words to his own political struggle.

It was quoted twice by another US President, Richard Nixon: in his victory speech in 1968, and his resignation speech in 1974 following the Watergate scandal.

"How to Win a Marginal Seat: My Year Fighting For My Political Life” will be published by Biteback on March 17.

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