Place your bets for MP of the future (From Stroud News and Journal)

Place your bets for MP of the future

IF you aren't already familiar with the name Alex Farrow, I'd bet my pension that you will be in the next few years.

It is difficult to know how to summarise the 16 year-old's seemingly endless list of achievements, which include the Princess Diana Memorial Award, a term as Stroud MP for the UK Youth Council and raising over £165,000 for charity.

He attends Marling School where he has been predicted all As and A*s. Recently the school nominated him for Gloucestershire Young Person of the Year, which he won on Saturday, selected from 28 nominees.

"I had forgotten about that," he says, which prompts his Mum to remind him that he has also been nominated for the Deutschbank Spotlight Award.

The Gloucestershire Young Person of the Year award, is open 16-25 year-olds and was set up to provide recognition for the work young people do in their community.

Alex was nominated by his school, Marling, for his charity work and involvement in youth politics on a local and national level.

With such an enviable CV, you might expect to meet a gangly teenager with dubious dress sense and a vacant social calendar.

But Alex is funny, articulate and charming, and as yet his numerous achievements have left no trace of arrogance or false modesty.

After chairing the school council, he was asked join the district Youth Council. Here, it was suggested he run for Stroud MP for the UK Youth Council.

"I wasn't actually expecting to win," he admits. "I only put in my form three weeks before the election."

He is now fearlessly facing cabinet members three times his age.

"Sometimes they do it right and sometimes they do it wrong," he says.

"I was in a position where I had to stand up for all the young people in Stroud and the Cotswolds area."

"It's got to be done," he adds. "Some of them do say and do the most stupid things."

He came to the end of his term of office as the UK Youth Council's MP for Stroud in February, relinquishing his seat to Emily Wardell from Cirencester.

Though he is coy about his political orientation, his is very vocal about what he sees as the most important election topic.

"I think the biggest issue is getting young people involved," he says.

"Most of the politicians have forgotten that only 39% of young people voted in the last election. They should be concentrating on bringing that up to a decent level or trying to find out why people aren't voting."

He balances his school work with paid employment with the National Youth Agency, a government organisation which promotes the involvement of young people in public affairs.

Though Alex is heavily involved in politics, he describes it as his second choice of career.

His real passion is acting and he attends Gill Woods drama classes, where he is currently rehearsing every Sunday for Spectacular Dracula, to be shown on November 7.

Ideally, he wants to work in musicals, and somehow manages to find the time to fit in piano, saxophone and singing lessons into his hectic schedule.

He thinks acting and politics are complimentary disciplines, pointing out: "Most politicians are very good actors."

Together with Katy Dainton from the Youth Council, he has also managed to persuade Stagecoach to raise the age of reduced-rate child fares from 16 to 18 in Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire.

"At the start they weren't keen to talk to us at all," he says.

So he harnessed the power of the media, in the form of a column he writes for a local newspaper. "I wrote really bad things about them for a couple of weeks," he says with a grin, "and then they were quite keen to talk to me."

A meeting ensued with the company's head honchos, who agreed to adopt the scheme from May onwards in Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire with a view to extending it nationwide in the future.

Alex describes his biggest achievement as a non-uniform day he organised for the Tsunami relief fund which ultimately raised over £165,000.

I ask him what drives him to work so hard when most kids his age are content with trying to sneak into the local pub to chat up girls.

"Oh, I do all that stuff too." he says mischievously. "I just do it when I'm not doing everything else."