The 52-year-old home secretary was brought up by his teacher mother on her own, has been divorced and his teenage son hit the headlines last year for selling drugs.

At the age of ten, Mr Straw's insurance clerk father left the family home in Brentwood, Essex, after a failed marriage.

Mr Straw is a keen Blackburn Rovers fan

Mr Straw told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I was raised by a single parent with my mother bringing up five of us.

"So, I'm not lecturing or hectoring single parents who on the whole do an extremely good job in very difficult circumstances."

Even in those days, the young Jack Straw was an example of self-discipline and respect for law and order.

It is reported that as an 11-year-old Mr Straw berated an ice cream van salesman for ringing his chimes after the 7pm curfew on such behaviour.

Two years later the aspiring politician had made his first political speech, and at 15 he joined the Labour party.

In 1967, Mr Straw was elected the first left-leaning president of the National Union of Students campaigning for higher student grants.

Mr Straw married his first wife Anthea shortly after graduation from Leeds University in the early 1970s.

But tragedy struck when their infant daughter Rachel died within a week of her birth from a heart defect.

A few months later in 1978, the couple divorced, their marriage wrecked by the premature death of a child on top of career commitments.

In the same year, Mr Straw married his second wife Alice, who gave birth to their two children William and Charlotte.

A school governor and church-goer who lists his hobbies as cooking puddings and supporting Blackburn Rovers, Mr Straw cemented a close family life by spending as much time as possible in his London home.

William Straw hit the headlines last year

But the politician's attempts to keep his family out of the news fell apart on Christmas Eve last year, when The Mirror published allegations of cannabis dealing by a cabinet minister's son.

A frenzy of speculation rapidly descended into legal farce as court orders were imposed preventing the media from reporting that the minister was Mr Straw and the alleged dealer his 17-year-old son.

But, once freed by the courts to speak openly a week after the news broke, Mr Straw won admiration for his honest approach to the family crisis.

He had taken William to a police station where he confessed all. The teenager was later given a caution.

Mr Straw said of the incident: "Being a parent means giving love and support, and, when it's necessary, confronting children with their wrongdoing.