Profile: Mr and Mrs Expenses

Just twenty-four hours ago, Andrew MacKay, a long-standing Tory MP and a key member of David Cameron's inner circle assured the local paper for his Bracknell constituency there was nothing 'unreasonable' in his expenses.

In words that today may appear somewhat self-delusional, he confidently declared: "I have checked through all my expense claims over the past four years and there is nothing that stands out – I am confident there is nothing unreasonable in there at all."

His resignation as Cameron's close advisor, or consigliere as some inevitably dubbed the position, is the biggest blow he has suffered in a long, if unspectacular, political career.

MacKay, in fact, is probably better known as the husband of the slightly more glamorous former journalist Julie Kirkbride, the Conservative MP for Bromsgrove and, at 48, eleven years his junior. It is their dual claims for second home allowances that have now led his resignation. The couple have one son and he has two children from his first marriage.

He first entered Parliament in 1977, winning a by-election in Stetchford, Birmingham. He lost the seat in 1979, but returned four years later as the MP for East Berkshire and has represented the area ever since.

MacKay held shadow cabinet posts under John Major and William Hague, but returned to the backbenches in 2004. He was brought out of relative obscurity by Cameron in 2005 and given his key advisory role. Among the party he was seen as very loyal, fully signed up to the Cameron Conservative modernisation project and the possessor of a good political brain.

Although his prospects of a ministerial post in a future Cameron Government may seem to have been severely compromised by the expenses scandal, one Westminster insider said: He will be able to claim it was all approved by the Commons officials and if he pays off the debt, he could easily return as a minister in the future.''

Kirkbride, whose support for David Davies in the Conservative leadership contest appears to have kept her out of shadow cabinet contention, is, ironically, a former political journalist on the Daily Telegraph, which has been carrying the expenses discloses for the past week.

As a young reporter in the Parliamentary lobby, Kirkbride raised eyebrows and provoked admiring glances among the ranks of MP's with her penchant for short leather skirts. She later became engaged to Stephen Milligan, the Conservative MP who died accidentally during a bizarre auto-erotic asphyxiation incident in 1994. However, there were suggestions that the couple had split up just before his death.

A graduate of Girton College, Cambridge, Kirkbride also worked for the BBC, ITN and the Sunday Telegraph, before she became Conservative MP for Bromsgrove in 1997. She was briefly Tory spokeswoman on culture, media and sport during 2003-4.