When Anthony Albanese became leader of the Labor Party in May 2019 I went around to his Sydney home to interview him.

It had been a rough start to the year. On the morning of January 1 his wife of almost 20 years, Carmel Tebbutt, had told him she was leaving him.

Politics can be notoriously brutal on relationships but Albanese was completely blindsided.

This was a man who was used to being in complete control of the world around him and now suddenly the earth had disappeared beneath his feet.

The notoriously tough political warrior was almost brought undone. It was only his interminably beloved dog Toto — whom he still dotes on and calls his “princess” — that got him through.

That’s a hard thing for a hard man to admit.

Getting the Labor leadership also revived him — if he couldn’t be married to Carmel he could at least be married to the party, his other great love.

But still the man who would become PM cut a solitary figure in his Marrickville house.

His son Nathan had finished school and came and went, as young men do, and it was often just Albo there on his own.

He was always busy of course — he is possessed of a kind of OCD where he has to constantly be doing something, be it dealing with China or doing the dishes.

But Albo was also a warm and gregarious man who had a lot of love to give and if he gave any more of it to the Cavoodle there was a danger the dog would explode.

And then along came Jodie.

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Everybody says I am close to Albo and many of my beloved readers delight in telling me I am too close to Albo.

I cannot confirm or deny either charge but the truth is I have never even met Jodie Haydon, his new-found wife — and no, before you ask, I was not invited to the wedding.

If life has taught me anything, it is that I was not put on this earth to write love stories.

What I do know, however, is that this was a transformative relationship for the nascent Labor leader.

In truth, Albo has never suffered from a dearth of confidence but if he ever came close to a nadir it was in those early months of 2019 when his wife had left him and his arch rival appeared set to become the next Prime Minister of Australia.

Bill Shorten’s shock loss and Albanese’s unopposed elevation shook him out of the darkness of his marriage break-up and put, for want of a better cliche, a bit of lead in his pencil.

But it was Jodie who seemed to make him shine.

They were cautious at first, as both he and Jodie have publicly said, and as older relationships always are.

It was also clear that they were both pretty quickly smitten.

The Covid lockdowns provided unprecedented cover for their relationship and then in June 2020 they were spotted dining together at the China Doll restaurant on Woolloomooloo’s Finger Wharf.

It is not a place to go if you want to remain unnoticed. They were clearly ready for the world to know.

Things got more serious six months later when Albanese was involved in a car crash just around the corner from his Marrickville home.

His Toyota Camry was accidentally T-boned by a Range Rover in an incident that could have taken a far more serious turn.

As he lay in his hospital bed, both he and Haydon caught a glimpse of an alternative future in which the unthinkable had happened. Something changed that day.

Albo’s devotion to Jodie was made manifest when he — or rather they — bought a $4.3 million clifftop “mansion” on — or rather above — Copacabana Beach, on the NSW Central Coast.

This purchase, far from Albo’s usual sphere of influence in Sydney’s Inner West, was made because of Jodie’s family ties in the area.

It caused a huge political storm in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis, although private Labor research suggested Sydney voters were impressed he got it for such a good price.

This alone perhaps tells you everything you need to know about Australian politics but the story of Albo and Jodie perhaps tells us something else.

Like the nauseatingly corny plot of a Hollywood movie — The American President, I’m looking at you — it reminds us that politicians, for all we like to hate them, are ultimately still people. They live and breathe and love.

And if there is one thing I know about Anthony Albanese it is that he is 100 per cent truly a man in love.