''Do you have any regrets, Mr. president?'' I asked. And the man who killed at least 300,000 Ugandans, who had the Anglican bishop of Kampala assassinated and dumped on the side of a road, and who had several of his own ministers thrown to the crocodiles of Lake Victoria, placidly replied, with his trademark Big Smile: ''No, only nostalgia.'' I asked how he wanted to be remembered. Apparently recalling his boxing days, he replied, ''Just as a great athlete.''

It's called the banality of evil. Idi Amin was never an exceptional person. As someone said, you have to be a great man to do great good, but even an imbecile can do great evil. You just need to be in the right place at the right time. Idi Amin was a former cook of a British colonial regiment who happened to be among the few Ugandans with military experience when his country became independent.

He was guilty of great atrocities, of course. But an entire generation of African leaders was guilty, too. The difference is that Idi Amin did what he did in a transparent way: the mayhem and the horror, but also the famous photograph of white businessmen forced to carry him on his chair; his satirical wedding ceremony in front of a huge portrait of Queen Elizabeth II of England; his repeated claims to the throne of Scotland. When asked about allegations of cannibalism, instead of denying it he answered: ''I don't like human flesh. It's too salty for me.''

He had an unconscious genius for political theater, mocking the grand statesmen of the era with telegrams full of condescending words. To Henry Kissinger: ''You are not intelligent because you never come to see me when you need advice.'' To the queen: ''I hear that England has economic problems. I'm sending a cargo ship full of bananas to thank you for the good days of the colonial administration.'' To Leonid Brezhnev and Mao Zedong: ''If you need a mediator I am at your disposal.''

On Saturday Idi Amin died in his Saudi exile. Africa is a different place than when he left it, but not necessarily better. There are fewer buffoons, but still many devils on the continent. Along with Jean-Bedel Bokassa, the self-proclaimed emperor of the Central African Republic, Idi Amin represented the simpler days when the West could believe that Africa's problem was a handful of mad dictators. We now know we were wrong.