JACK Straw could yet make it into 10 Downing Street as Prime Minister, his friend and colleague Gerald Kaufman claimed as the Foreign Secretary celebrated 25 years as MP for Blackburn.

The veteran Manchester Parliamentarian was the main speaker at the party held in the Blackburn Rovers Premier Suite at Ewood Park.

Mr Kaufman said only one man in the past 100 years other than the Blackburn MP had been both Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary - and that man Jim Callaghan added Chancellor of the Exchequer and Prime Minister to those great offices of state.

And Mr Kaufman said there was no reason why Mr Straw could not one day do the same.

His prediction bore out the wisdom of Blackburn Council Leader Sir Bill Taylor's wife Ann before Mr Straw's 1979 election triumph. She was preparing stew for tea when her husband rang to say a hungry Parliamentary candidate would be joining them. When they arrived, the stew had acquired a crust and become a rather grand pie. When he queried the transformation, she told him: "This man is going places. You can't give him stew.''

Perhaps as a result of that, Sir Bill told more than 400 guests that he was asked in 1979 to become Mr Straw's agent on a temporary basis adding: "Twenty four and a half years later, I am still doing the job and waiting for it to be confirmed on a permanent basis." Mr Straw paid tribute to all the people who had helped him become and remain Blackburn MP including Sir Bill, his secretary Anne Higginson, former Blackburn Council leader Lord Tom Taylor, and his predecessor and former employer Barbara Castle who had introduced him to the town and inspired him by her "character and vision''.

But most of all he praised his family, chiefly his wife Alice and mother Joan who brought up five children on her own and sent him out canvassing for the Labour party from an early age.

It was reading one of the leaflets he was handing out made him realise that being an MP was more fun than campaigning for one!

Mr Straw said his real message was to thank his constituency of 25 years of "wonderful fun'' and added: "Blackburn is special.''