I forget the exact details now, but it seems that President Giscard d’Estaing alone was always hard at it with a variety of attractive young ladies, including Mirielle Mattieu, Brigitte Bardot, Sylvia Kristel, Claudia Cardinale, Madame Castafiore, and our own redoubtable Mrs Slocombe. And I hear tell that Presidents Chirac and Mitterrand have also had their fair share of birds of the unfeathered variety, no doubt wooing them in their well rehearsed French accents over a half bottle of the very smoothest Piat d’Or.Sex. Of course, the French are very different to us in matters of the flesh. Not for us the silver-tongued flattery, the bunches of fresh flowers, the seductive fragrances, the diamond bracelets, the exotic lingerie, the candlelit dinners for two. Even if we knew what on earth lingerie was for, its instructions are often unclearly marked and we would be bound to get tangled up in it Anyway, it is notoriously bad at keeping out the cold Flattery and flowers? Not our way at all. “Well done, old girl,” we say if a fence has been cleared, a lob successfully hit, or a stew served unburnt, but we feel no need to thrust flowers down our loved one’s throat.

No: we British prefer the more honest and down-to-earth approach. First, we exchange pleasantries with any lady with outdoorsy interests, a healthy approach to life and a sensible hairband. Second, after no more than a matter of months we throw caution to the wind and embark on Christian names. Third, we go looking for suitable rings armed with a ten-bob note. And finally we embark on a six-year engagement, just to be on the safe side.Sex. I find it immensely regrettable that the tabloids have become so obsessed with the activity.

At times, it is as though they feel duty-bound to sneak it into every single paragraph, so desperate are they to grab the attention of their failing readership. I am only grateful to the Lord Chancellor for his brave stab at having it removed from our papers forever, at least where politicians and senior members of the judiciary are concerned. Personally, I’m delighted the Lord Chancellor’s own marriage is so water- tight that he can never be chastised on the grounds of hypocrisy. If he really was there, I thought the foreign secretary was being a shade tactless. Dr Kissinger, with all his manifest deficiencies, was at least as clever as Mr Callaghan There could be no serious dispute about that. From the adjoining room I heard the foreign secretary:”Henry? HENRY? Now, to sum up what we agreed before You provide the muscle and we’ll supply the brains.

All right?”Perhaps he, like many of his generation, thought it was impossible to be heard over a long distance unless you talked very loudly; or perhaps the whole performance had been laid on for my benefit, no Dr Kissinger at the end of the line at all, instead some functionary such as Lord McNally or Sir Tom McCaffrey. The USA possessed an interest in appeasing Turkey because it attached importance to the bases in that country, as it still does. When the conflict was going on, the government looking increasingly unsure about what, if anything, it ought to be doing, I visited Mr Callaghan at his room in the Commons. Shortly after I had turned up, he excused himself, saying he had an urgent call to make to Dr Kissinger. The United Kingdom was caught in the middle as guarantor of Cyprus’s integrity and independence.