There can be very few Tory MPs who end up becoming members of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

But that is what happened to Howard Johnson, first MP for Brighton Kemptown when the seat was formed in 1950.

Johnson was born in Brighton and was a well-known solicitor who specialised in criminal law. He would always take up the most hopeless of causes.

Villains knew that by hiring him they could be guaranteed some histrionics in court on their behalf which might even occasionally work in their favour.

Johnson was a flamboyant, somewhat theatrical figure whose beautiful wife Betty Frankiss was a stage actress. Watching him perform before Brighton magistrates was a daily delight.

He was elected as a Tory councillor in Brighton in 1945 after serving in the Second World War and had a great interest in housing, always in short supply.

His majorities were never large in Kemptown, a marginal seat which went Labour in 1964 and 1997. But he worked hard and was constantly in the news.

Johnson was particularly fond of animals and made several attempts, some successful, to lessen dangers at the Grand National steeplechase at Aintree which claimed the lives of many horses. He was a leading member of the RSPCA.

Among the many causes espoused by Johnson, large and small, were banning fox hunting, ending capital punishment, swiftly getting rid of rotting seaweed on the beach and taking firm action against violence from Teddy Boys.

He was a great friend of Lewis Cohen, the Labour councillor who eventually became Mayor and a peer. Cohen twice stood against him in Kemptown but lost.

Once they had a cycle race from Johnson’s house in Ditchling on the far side of the Downs to Brighton. I think Johnson won that one too.

For more than 20 years, Johnson was a director of the Alliance Building Society which Cohen had founded. It became one of the largest in Britain.

Johnson regarded himself as a radical and eventually decided he was not really a Tory. He did not stand in the 1959 general election although he was still quite young and would almost certainly have won.

He had caused considerable opposition by constantly calling for an inquiry into police corruption in Brighton. The Chief Constable was charged with several offences when he appeared in the dock at the Old Bailey. He was acquitted but was sacked.

Johnson had increasing disagreements with the party although he was enough of a loyalist never to break the party whip.

Freed from Westminster discipline, he became a Liberal and it was rumoured that in the end he voted Labour. He certainly joined CND.

He continued his career as a lawyer and that is when I met him. We became quite good friends and even in old age when he had retired to the Isle of Man, he would always seek me out on his visits to Brighton.

It was a surprise that this most convivial of men should leave Brighton but he liked the Isle of Man too and died there in 2000 aged almost 90.