"I used to be the most famous person off Bridgehall estate and then we got [Phil] Foden," Angela Rayner giggles gleefully.
"He's just ruined it for me. Before Foden it was me and now the kids rip my picture off the school wall and it's Foden all the way."
Speaking to the Manchester Evening News on Labour's election battle bus, the party's deputy leader is on home turf. She is back in Ashton-under-Lyne - the constituency she has represented in Parliament as an MP since 2015 - surrounded by friends and comrades.
READ MORE: After 14 years of Tory rule, is Manchester any Greater?
And while she jokes about a Man City footballer being more famous than her, she knows she is poised to become one of the most powerful women in the UK. As polls predicted, her party went on to win a landslide victory at the election a few weeks later.
Her remarkable rise to power shows why you cannot write anyone off. She is now the deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
Born in 1980, Angela's parents were on benefits. She was a 'free school meals kid'.
So far, not so extraordinary. But in interviews over the years, she has revealed how difficult her upbringing really was.
Angela had to look after mum, who had bipolar disorder. She did not grow up with books because her mum could not read or write.
Her father hardly worked, she says, due to health issues. Looking back, she believes she could easily have been taken into care.
At 16, she had her first son, Ryan. She took her exams at the failing Avondale Secondary - now Stockport Academy - while pregnant.
Leaving school with seven low-grade GCSEs, she later studied part-time at Stockport College before becoming a care worker. It was in this role that she was first elected as a trade union representative and later became Unison's most senior official in the region.
She married Mark Rayner, another Unison official, in 2010 before having two more sons, one of whom was born prematurely at 23 weeks. Seven years later, she would become a grandmother at 37, after her eldest son had his own kid, giving herself the nickname 'Grangela'.
In 2014, she was selected to stand as the Labour candidate in Ashton-under-Lyne. Speaking to the Oldham Chronicle at the time, she said she had no vision of a future that featured her entering Parliament by the time she was 35 - but she was not fazed by it at all.
The following year, she became the first female MP to secure the safe Labour seat. And it didn't take long for her to rise up the ranks.
Angela was appointed to Jeremy Corbyn's shadow cabinet just over a year after becoming an MP. Two decades after leaving school pregnant at 16 with hardly any qualifications, she became the shadow secretary of state for education in her majesty's opposition.
In an interview with the Guardian following her appointment to the role - which she took on alongside the shadow women and equalities brief - she spoke of how, as a teenager, she was told 'in no uncertain terms', that she would 'never amount to anything'.
"If only they could see me now," she said.
But Angela's rise to power did not end there. Soon after Labour lost the 2019 general election, she ran to become deputy leader.
She won the contest in April 2020. But Salford MP Rebecca Long-Bailey, who she backed as leader, came second to Sir Keir Starmer.
It has been widely reported that her relationship with the Labour leader has been rocky. Speaking on the Rest Is Politics podcast earlier this year, she spoke of how she found out that she had lost her job as the Labour Party chair in May 2021 through the press.
"It wasn't the nicest moment," she said. "But we came out of it stronger. Since then, me and Keir have had a very healthy respect for each other."
The reshuffle, which saw Angela take on new shadow cabinet roles, came after Labour lost a parliamentary by-election. But since then, Labour's electoral fortunes have turned and Angela was later appointed shadow secretary for levelling up, housing and communities.
However, life as a working class female MP who is constantly in the spotlight has come with its own difficulties. In March 2019, Angela revealed that she had fitted panic buttons at home after receiving rape and death threats and in 2021, a 52-year-old man from Cambridgeshire was convicted for sending her menacing messages including an email telling her to "watch your back and your kids".
In an interview with Sky News earlier this year, Angela explained how her social life has suffered. "I don't go out," she said, "I don't have a social life. People want to see me, they come to my house. It does change what you do. It has an impact on my day to day life."
Despite the dangers that have come with her rise to the top, it seems that nothing will stop Angela. On Labour's election battle bus early on in June, she was grinning from ear to ear, riding on a wave of enthusiasm from her supporters who had come to cheer her on.
But with her party taking a cautious approach throughout the campaign, careful not to say anything that would harm their chances of returning to power, did it mean that Angela had to bite her lip over the six weeks?
"No," she tells the M.E.N., "I just think you've got to say it how you see it.
"I think that's how working class [people] are. We'll just tell you what we think and that's what I've done."
On Friday (July 5), Angela was the first of Sir Keir's top team to enter Downing Street. At 3.16pm, No 10 sent out an official statement.
"The King has been pleased to approve the appointment of the Rt Hon Angela Rayner MP as Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities," the statement says. "She will also be Deputy Prime Minister."
People are judged by where they are from, how they speak and what they do for work. Too often, they are written off because of the circumstances they grew up in, told that they will never amount to anything - no matter how hard they try to prove their potential.
Angela Rayner's extraordinary journey will inspire people all over the country, not least those growing up on the Bridgehall estate. Perhaps now, as she becomes one of the most powerful women in the country, she can claim back that title she lost to Phil Foden.
