His sexual appetite was once described as “to Olympic gold-medal standards”, he had a pet dog named after Adolf Hitler’s mistress and once described Margaret Thatcher as having “dainty ankles”. He also lived in a sumptuous 12th century castle in the Kent countryside, the moat of which he would swim in every summer (not to mention his occasional naked dips in the Channel at Hythe in a chilly November). Friends with Port Lympne and Howletts creator John Aspinall, he once delivered a speech in the Commons late one evening having just attended a wine-tasting event which left him, as he admitted “m…
