THERE are times when we have to admit to obsessions that in polite company we usually keep to ourselves. For me this is such a time.

I am an election anorak. I collect election results and election leaflets like other people collect postage stamps, train numbers or wild flowers (and I've done all those things too at different times!) I can talk swings with the best of them.

I can tell you how people can fiddle postal votes.

I can talk at length about first-past-the-post, the d'Hondt quota or the single transferable vote.

But of course I'm also a political campaigner and for people like us there is nothing better than a good by-election.

So last week I could be found delivering leaflets and knocking on doors on council estates 240 miles away in the old Fife burghs of Dunfermline and Rosyth.

It's almost 44 years since I first went to help the Liberal candidate (my noble friend Eric Lubbock Lord Avebury) win a famous victory at Orpington which signalled that the Liberal party under Jo Grimond had come back from the dead.

In 1968 I came to the Nelson and Colne by-election to run a rudimentary campaign for David Chadwick, the first Liberal candidate here for a quarter of a century. Heather and I liked the area so much that we moved here for good.

It's been a long struggle to get where we are with 63 MPs and indeed 74 members of the Lords.

We control Pendle Council and are the main opposition on both Burnley and Ribble Valley, with only Rossendale "still in the dark ages" from our point of view.

But there's nothing like taking a by-election for politicos it's like winning the cup!

Willie Rennie's win at Dunfermline was a dream come true.

A huge 16 per cent swing from Labour in Gordon Brown's own backyard!

The Scottish Nationalists beaten down, and Mr Cameron's New Tories falling further back in fourth place!

The ripples from this result will restore motivation and belief to local Liberal Democrat members throughout the country.

Our recent travails really do seem behind us, and so soon thanks to the good people of Fife.

Back in the Lords, today we have the second reading of the Electoral Administration Bill. More grist for anoraks like me, and a real chance to stamp out postal voting fraud.

Anoracky yes, but very, very important stuff.