It is a decade since a newspaper devoted its front page to a giant photograph of Kenneth Clarke’s trademark brothel creepers and asked: “Who can fill these shoes?” The Conservatives have never managed to answer the question.

After Clarke’s attempt to recast himself as a Eurosceptic last week, the Tories are twittering again. It has taken his party two months to notice that Clarke is standing: the chatter has been all about the two Davids, Cameron and Davis.

It is not entirely the party’s fault: to the exasperation of his newly appointed spin doctor, Clarke muffed his big announcement by blurting it out on local radio. Only he could be that shambolic.

The political class says that he belongs to the amateur era. But that is why voters, fed up with Tony Blair’s empty rhetoric, find him attractively substantial: you get what it says on the tin.

You can hardly see him behind the files on his Commons desk. Even that veritable European food mountain, the Clarke gut, is hidden. Only a snake of cigar smoke indicates this is the lion’s lair.

Still, a hand shoots out with a warm smile: bonhomie could be his middle name. If Gordon Brown is all working breakfasts at dawn, Clarke belongs at midnight on a Mediterranean veranda, enjoying Duke Ellington, Jack Daniels, booming about fast cars and why he is right on, well, everything.

What does Clarke want to do with power other than exercise it (the only exercise he enjoys)? A Victorian print above his desk shows Gladstone being offered a bag inscribed “policies”. The statesman says: “No thanks my dear, I’m going to go without it.”

I am briefed that this time “Ken really wants it” and that “he would consider it an honour to lead the party”. It is instructive that this even needs to be said. But even new, keen Ken is not so vulgar as to canvass. He wants a shadow cabinet of all the talents, including youngsters, and promises to share the “limelight”.

“The last general election was the most presidential in history, but none of the three contenders were strong presidential candidates.” Ouch.

He contrasts Michael Howard’s downgrading of the shadow cabinet with Blair letting colleagues shine: “As secretary of state for health I faced Robin Cook.” A heavyweight contest. “Yes,” he laughs, patting a tummy of a trillion lunches. “Though I suspect Robin was a relative lightweight.”

David Davis, a likeable cove, rejects the centre ground for somewhere called “common ground”.

“That doesn’t mean much to me,” says Clarke. “Elections are fought in the centre. My strongest appeal is that I have higher approval ratings than any contender, higher still among wavering Labour and Liberal Democrat voters. The Lib Dems are terrified of me.”

He is scathing of how the party lost its natural supporters, “the educated, professional, managerial and women. I find it almost comic the number of people who tell me they would vote Tory if I were leader”.