Churchill credited him as “making the political weather”. Later, Enoch Powell in his biography of Joseph Chamberlain, father of Neville, wrote “All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs.”

Well, we’re reminded of this in virtue of David Patraeus’s recent, spectacular fall from grace and of Jack Straw’s more modest tumble.

Both men, in our opinion, spent their entire careers working ceaselessly for the betterment of their professional surroundings and given the public nature of those environs, for the improvement to all our lives.

Whom among us hasn’t messed up? Assuming you’re not an axe-murderer – in which case take yourself straight off to the see the boys in blue – our stupidities are such as to reveal our human frailties and are not born of an insidious desire to corrupt and hoodwink.

Wouldn’t it be lovely if we concentrated more on original blessing than original sin and wouldn’t it be gorgeous if reading this, you thought it sense over schmaltz (sp?).