James Couchman

James Randall Couchman was born on 11 February 1942. He was educated at Cranleigh School and the University of Newcastle and was a London Borough of Bexley councillor from 1974 to 1982. He later served as a county councillor in Oxfordshire from 2005 until he retired in 2013.^[1]

Couchman first stood for Parliament at Chester-le-Street in 1979, but was beaten by Labour's Giles Radice.

Couchman was Member of Parliament (MP) for Gillingham from 1983 until his defeat in 1997 by Labour's Paul Clark. He appeared in a documentary for Channel 4's Cutting Edge entitled Last Year's Tories, which looked at the lives of ten Conservative MPs who had been unseated at the 1997 election, which aired on the first anniversary of their defeat in 1998.^[2]

Couchman died on 16 November 2023, at the age of 81.^[3][4]

• "Times Guide to the House of Commons", Times Newspapers Limited, 1997 edition.

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by James Couchman