Yet those inclined to dismiss him as a lightweight were mistaken. Behind the affectations lurked a sharp intellect and a prodigious talent for networking. “People say you have to be nice to people on the way up because you might need them on the way down. But on my way down I’ve met people I never want to see again,” he said after his dismissal. The quip was irresistible but misleading, for Norman St John-Stevas had a genius for making and keeping friends, and to those favoured with his friendship he was ever kind and loyal. After being sacked by Mrs Thatcher, he was duly rewarded with the appointments for which he became better known and which provided rich opportunities for him to play the aristocrat he had somehow always seemed to be.