What next? for Ed Balls - Baker and Karaoke King
Two things you didn't know about Ed Balls: he bakes cakes and does a mean turn with a karaoke machine. Not so surprising? You wait until you hear which song he sings...
One day she was trying to phone the man who might well be the next Shadow Chancellor with an urgent query.
"He couldn't talk." she explains "He was in mid flow with the beater, getting a cake finished for one of his kid's birthday party. He does a lot of the cooking, I think"
So now his leadership bid is over would he perhaps regret not taking the house-husbanding more seriously, and allowing his wife and fellow cabinet minister Yvette Cooper to have put her name forward rather than him?
"They had talked about it at the start, and decided it was the right thing for him, but I don't know whether they now think that she might have done better."
Mrs McCarthy-Fry worked as his PPS and points out that amongst the Balls backers are most of those who've worked with him.
Look him in the eye
"Close up he's nothing like the stereotype he's painted." she says "He's got a great strategic brain, but when he looks people in the eye they trust him."
The former Portsmouth MP is convinced that Balls has enhanced his reputation through the contest. His campaign team are widely seen to have done a good job, and it was his second preferences that finally gave Ed Miliband victory in the complex voting system.
He may have come up through the ranks of special advisers but many believe Balls' man-of-the-people style has been under-rated.
Man of The People
While Westminster politicos and the media have been fascinating each other with the arguments over exactly what sort of graduate tax each could support, or how close they were to decisions under Blair, how much of this really touches the lives of voters?
Surely the biggest problem the whole political class faces is still their disconnect from the people who put them in power?
With a Miliband at the helm the three party leaders are so similar in age and upbringing one of them is surely going to have to take their party in a surprising direction just to make clear who is who.
And key amongst those early decisions will be who gets the Shadow Chancellor's job.
Which brings me to the karaoke. Ed Balls favourite song is, apparently "Endless Love" and as a cake-baking modern man he opts to take the female part.
OK he didn't get Endless Love from the Labour Party but why didn't we know all this earlier? It might have made the difference!
Welcome to the hustings! I'm Peter Henley, the BBC's political reporter in the south of England. From parish councils in Sussex, to European politics in Oxford, this is the blog for you. 
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