DURHAM County Hall, 8.20am, April 29. Ten minutes early for an appointment with Simon Henig, the council leader, I’m directed to a seat in reception and to the morning papers. “Labour at war,” blazes one, and at once subsumes the rest.

Coun Henig strides in exactly to time, briefcase in one hand and bulging carrier bag in the other, not just politics on his mind.

Whatever confidences the briefcase may conceal, the carrier bag’s an open secret. It’s props for the photograph – Leicester City scarf, Leicester City books and programmes, Leicester City clappers. More of the clappers shortly.

Simon Henig, 46, is the most influential man in North-East local government, the northern powerhouse personified.

He leads both Durham County Council – with 94 seats the largest Labour group in the country – and the North-East Combined Authority, holds senior roles on many other regional, national and Labour Party bodies and will tomorrow at Buckingham Palace be invested with the CBE awarded in the New Year honours list.

He also has a King Power Stadium season ticket. Labour he may be, but in football he is true, true Blue.

Within two or three days of the early morning meeting, his beloved Leicester could win the top division title for the only time in their history – the first first-time winners since Nottingham Forest almost 40 years ago. “Coming in the same week as the CBE would be quite appropriate,” he supposes. “We’d planned a small family celebration, anyway.”

Little more than a year ago City were bottom of the Premiership, seven points from safety with eight matches to go. This season the bookies offered them at 5,000-1 for the title, but quoted just 4,000-1 on the Pope playing for Glasgow Rangers and 2,000-1 on Elvis rocking up somewhere almost as improbable.

In a customarily crowded diary, the leader has another meeting at 9am. We have just 30 minutes to ponder the most unlikely football story since West Auckland won the World Cup.

THOUGH born in Lancaster, where his father was MP and himself leader of the council, there seemed little doubt where young Henig’s football allegiance would lie.

His grandfather had been Leicester’s lord mayor and was the first chairman of the English Tourist Board. His parents were City fans, too; an aunt usually took him to matches.

“In a place like Lancaster it wasn’t that unusual, there were all sorts of loyalties,” he says. “Some older folk even supported Blackpool.”

His mum still talks of 1962-63, when City led the old first division with four matches to go and didn’t win any of them. Cautions counsels; anticipation increases, nonetheless.

He dimly recalls a match against Derby – “I was only about six, I remember a big staircase” – but the relationship was consummated at Christmas 1978. “There were hardly any other games on because of the weather, but we had a big hot air balloon over the pitch. In one match a certain Gary Lineker made his debut, in the other Keith Weller wore his infamous white tights. If there was a conscious decision as a nine-year-old, then that was it.”

He gained a degree and a doctorate at Oxford, lectures in politics at Sunderland University, became a councillor for the Chester-le-Street area in 1999 and was county council leader nine years later.

He is also a member of football’s 92 Club, closes on the Scottish set, talks as lucidly and as knowledgeably about the Northern League as about the Premiership.

His wife Kathryn, a fellow councillor, supports Newcastle United. “Fairly soon after we met, City suffered that infamous 7-1 defeat at St James’ Park, last game of 1992-93. It didn’t do a great deal for our relationship,” he says.

At the beginning of April 2015, things looked equally black, City saved by a run of seven wins in their final nine games. He floats a fanciful theory linking the change in fortune to the interment of Richard III’s bones beneath Leicester Cathedral on March 26 that year.

It may also have been helped by the introduction in April 2015 of the clappers, blue-and-white noise machines left on every seat before the match and costing the club £12,500 a game – more expensive, in total, than the £400,000 they paid for Riyad Mahrez, England’s player of the year. “The atmosphere at the King Power Stadium is incredible. I’ve never known such noise at a football ground.

“It never crossed my mind that a year later we might win the league, never entered my head,” says Simon. “You just thought that it would be the usual top four with maybe Everton and Tottenham fifth and sixth. Teams like Leicester would be dreaming if they even thought of seventh.

“The odds were crazy. You’d never get 5,000-1 in a 20-horse race. It’ll never happen again.”

The lows have been frequent, the high point the 2-1 win at Liverpool in 1980-81– the Reds’ first home defeat for three-and-a-half years.

City, managed by Jock Wallace, were bottom. Three days earlier they’d lost to Exeter in the FA Cup. “I still regard that as the biggest shock in the history of top division football,” he says. “That was the real 5,000-1 shot.”

THE carrier bag also contains a ticket for the friendly at Lincoln City, July 21, 2015, Claudio Ranieri’s first game as manager after being sacked as national team manager of Greece following defeat by the Faroe Islands. It was also the first of many protracted return journeys up the men-at-work A1.

Sam, his son, usually goes, too – though most of his school friends support Sunderland. Daughter Lucy has no interest in football and little more in cricket. “She watched one ball of the Twenty-20 at Chester-le-Street,” says dad. “After that the bouncy castle proved a greater attraction.”

Anxious hours and endless journeys notwithstanding, he believes that football reduces rather than adds to the stresses of life in the fast lane.

“I’m quite a calm supporter, I was until this season, anyway. There’s nothing I like better than pitching up at a match where I’ve no emotional attachment to either side. There’s no better way of spending Saturdays than football.”

CITY, their own ambition seemingly limited, offered Ranieri £100,000 for every position they finished above 18th. Though they’d led the league since January the stats were interesting, just 42.4 per cent possession – only Sunderland and West Bromwich Albion had less – and in total 19 fewer shots than their opponents.

Simon simply points to the league table. “Technically Ranieri is the best Leicester manager I’ve seen. He’s made us very hard to break down. He’s not even tinkering, maybe just one person a game. It’s working, isn’t?”

It’s 9am, duty leads elsewhere. “I’m really a professional juggler,” he says. On Sunday he and Sam would be at Old Trafford to see City’s 1-1 draw. The following night they were joyously at home when Chelsea’s fightback ensured the title for Leicester. That night, too, Burnley secured promotion. The bookies offered 5,000-1 against them winning the Premiership next season.