THE Liberal Democrat MP Mark Oaten has described how a “midlife crisis” brought on by sudden hair loss contributed to his decision to have a relationship with a rent boy.

In today’s News Review section, Oaten says: “I was turning 40 and I really felt that I was losing my youth. The problem was undoubtedly compounded by my dramatic loss of hair in my late thirties.”

He writes that the onset of middle age heralded by his hair loss, together with the relentless workload of politics and the “deceitfulness” of constantly having to cover up information in his job combined to drive him into the liaison with a 23-year-old male prostitute.

Oaten says he had become “obsessed” by his hair loss. He would receive a “barrage of e-mails” after any television appearance — not discussing issues he had raised but asking what had happened to his hair.

The MP for Winchester had been strongly tipped as a contender to take over the Lib Dem leadership from Charles Kennedy, who had resigned after his problems with alcohol were made public.

When the rent-boy story broke in the press in January, it ended Oaten’s ambition to lead the party and, he says, led to a feeling that his marriage to his wife Belinda had been “blown apart”.

He tells how he saw from his house in Hampshire two cars which contained journalists. As he approached them, one said: “We have an allegation about a male escort . . .”

“He produced a photograph of the guy,” writes Oaten.

Oaten then went indoors his house and told Belinda, 37. They tried to act normally in front of their two daughters, Alice, 9, and Milly, 6: “Trying to get them breakfast was awful — pretending everything was normal when our lives had just been blown apart.”

As they realised that they had to flee, however, the illusion was soon broken. “Shortly before I walked out of the back door her [Belinda’s] calm at last gave way to fury,” writes Oaten. “She tried to hit me several times and threw her wedding ring back at me — and who could blame her.”

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