Ed Davey MP, the new Energy and Climate Change Secretary features today in a cracking interview by the Independent’s Matt chorley. Far from being caught in the headlights, Ed is revealed as a man of bravery and resilience, with green and Liberal principles from his youth.

Here’s an excerpt:

Covered in blood and carrying a stranger in his arms, Ed Davey turned to see the lights of a high-speed train hurtling towards him. A split-second decision to help a woman in trouble late one December night was about to cost him his life. “I decided that I had to go across the live rails to the other side,” the mild-mannered Liberal Democrat says, matter of factly.

The new Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, in his first interview since his “exhilarating” promotion, recalls in precise detail the dramatic moment he saved a woman’s life, repeatedly insisting that it was out of character.

“It was in December 1994. I was on platform 11 at Clapham Junction waiting to get my train home. It was about 10 o’clock at night, and a train came through and stopped at platform 12. This lady was bundled out of a door and a gentleman came out shouting after her. He pushed her down on to the platform and got on to the train. She tried to get on the train as it was pulling out, and fell between the train and the platform. Everyone went ‘ooh… ahhh… gosh’, but didn’t seem to be doing anything.”

And so, days before his 29th birthday, he calmly crossed the platform, took his coat off – “I was concerned that if I went down there it could get caught, and there were the electric lines” – and jumped down on to a line at Britain’s busiest train station.

“She hadn’t gone on to the live line, but she wasn’t moving. There weren’t any limbs lost, but she didn’t look very good.” As he checked to see if she was still breathing, the worst happened. “I was wondering whether to move her or not, and I looked up. It was late at night and there were these two big lights coming my way.”

Read on at the Independent.