Remember the dying days of the last century, when the House of Lords was filled with hereditary peers who knew they were an anachronism as they pottered around smelling of wet spaniel? The 7th Earl of Onslow, with his yellow socks and pot-bellied pigs, was one of my favourites. He once told me when I was a junior reporter that he didn’t mind that he was going to be kicked out as long as the new system was better, saying: “I’d feel a right toad if I didn’t hand on something shipshape for the next generation.”
The late Duke of Devonshire, a fishing expert, who used to test his flies in the bath while pretending to be a salmon, felt the same. “We must have
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