The national press is busy speculating about the future of London Mayor Boris Johnson, who looks likely to stand for Parliament in a west London seat, and may go on to challenge David Cameron – or other contenders such as Theresa May – for the Conservative Party leadership.

Would that be a good thing, I hear you ask, and what has it got to do with Ryedale?

I have known Boris as a journalistic colleague at the Spectator and the Daily Telegraph for many years, and I can give a cautious yes to the first part of that question. Yes, because he is charismatic, he lights up a room with wit and bonhomie, he has strong, clear views on the perils of Brussels and Miliband, and he has been a pretty good mayor of London.

Cautious because, as is well known, he can be a bit wayward. But on balance, Boris is a good egg and a good thing for British public life.

And his connection to Ryedale? Not many people know this, but Boris’s political career started here. I wrote last year, “Remind me some time to tell you the story of how I once drove Boris Johnson from York to Helmsley in a blizzard and made him lie spreadeagled on the bonnet to give us enough traction to reach the Brandsby summit”: it’s time to elaborate.

Back in 1995 I was a Conservative activist in Ryedale and a would-be parliamentary candidate elsewhere.

At the Telegraph one day, Boris told me he too was thinking of entering the political arena. Would he like to dip a toe in the water by coming to speak in Helmsley, I asked? To my surprise he agreed, and on the appointed date he joined me on the train northwards.

An audience of 80 was due to hear him at my house that evening. But at York, we met the snowstorm — and the rest is history. Boris wanted to turn round and take the next train south, but I persuaded him to stick with me. Two adventurous hours later we reached home, just in time for the start of the event.

But by then the roads around Helmsley were almost impassable, and no one — literally no one — came. We retired disconsolately for fish and chips at the Royal Oak in Helmsley’s Market Place.

A few months later Boris came back north to talk to an appreciative crowd at Pockley; he went on to fight an unwinnable Welsh seat before becoming MP for Henley, then London’s mayor. And when I bumped into him shortly after the candidacy for the Thirsk and Malton seat became vacant, following the de-selection of Anne McIntosh, I naturally asked whether he would throw his hat in. “I’m most flattered,” he said, “but I fear my chances wouldn’t be high, since absolutely nobody turned up to hear me last time.”

And so our chance of being represented by Britain’s funniest politician — and who knows, perhaps the next Tory prime minister — was lost in that blizzard long ago.