There is a growing global trend for recently retired politicians to set themselves up in business as statesmen on call. The rot began in 1982 when the Nobel Laureate Henry Kissinger linked up with the disgraced Thatcher Defence Minister Peter Carrington to form Kissinger Associates. Since then these groups have slithered into the public-private domain of the Military Industrial Government Complex like a plague of poisonous snakes.

One of the more recent arrivals is George Robertson a small-town Scottish Labour Party politician who has been on the make ever since he gave up his £ 140 000 tax-free term of crime as the Secretary-General of NATO two years ago. ’I am not a lobbyist,’ he declared. Of course not. God forbid the thought! He merely suggested to his old pal the trade minister Ian Pearson that it would be nice if some active government support was arranged for the international ventures of his paymasters Cable and Wireless.

I would like a few million pounds of tax payers’ money too. Perhaps I should call up my old Churchill College neighbour Gordon Campbell at British Nuclear Death Industry to see what he can organise? He played scrum-half for the college when I was keeping goal for the all-conquering Churchill College soccer team. What I enjoyed most was playing midfield for the second team alongside Johnny Kingsley Watson. But the first choice goalkeeper Norman Wilson won his way into the university side so I doubled up with the first team...as well as turning out for the rugby team. Fixture clashes were fewer than I would have expected with hindsight. Perhaps they were so desperate for players that they adjusted fixtures to my sporting schedules.

Cricket was my best sport. I did trials for Kent Young Amateurs in 1964 and Cambridge University in 1965 and formed the backbone of Christ’s Hospital’s old boys batting side between 1965 and 1968 when available with Doug Smith, Geoff Shelley and John Edmonds as company in Douglas Gowan’s Old Blues Cricket Team. But my finest hour was the day that I opened the batting for Churchill College against the full might of the professionals of Essex County Cricket Club. I am probably the only person to have ever carried his bat against Essex. But it was not altogether unrelated to the rapidity with which everyone else departed the crease.

The whole thing was a cock-up. Essex turned up with an almost full-strength First Eleven instead of a Second Eleven following some misunderstanding over the standard of Cambridge college sides. Ken Boyce was seriously quick. Our skipper Jim Fitzgerald won the toss and put us in. We made about fifty two runs and I got thirty of them after a charmed life that left me battered but unbowed ten wickets later. Essex won by eight wickets.

When I returned to my old college ten years ago and had dinner at high table with my Director of Studies Dick Tizard he remarked that all he could remember about me was that I was always playing something or other for the college. I feigned shock and horror at the unfairness of it all and reminded him that in my day there were only two prizes awarded to Cambridge University engineering students. One of them went to the nerd who came top in exams each year. The other was awarded by the Cambridge University Engineering Society to the winner of their annual Engineering Essay Competition. I won that one in 1966. And it wasn’t just a paper.

Three finalists were chosen by the committee. Now it just so happened that this particular year there was a de facto committee of one...and this was my rally navigator Chris Singleton who subsequently continued similar duties as Best Man at my wedding. But nonetheless we still had to endure our Big Brother Moment. The essay was just a start. We had to present it in the Engineering Department’s lecture hall on The Fenway before the assembled dignatories of the Engineering Society whereupon a vote was taken and the prize awarded. Think Eurovision Song Contest. It must be the only democratic vote I have ever won...and ever likely to win...in my life. I took the 1966 prize and my essay on The Practicability of A Fixed Channel Link has pride of place at the head of my bibliography as my first published article. Search the archives of the Cambridge University Engineering Society for confirmation.

At the peak of their earning power John Major and Margaret Thatcher are reported to have earned more than a million pounds a year after leaving Number Ten. Major is on the board of the US-based Carlyle Group currently reaping huge profits from the privatisation of QinetiQ the UK government’s defence and security technology agency. Appropriately John Cleese once played its head of department. The Carlyle Group operates as a merchant bank using its political connections to ‘generate extraordinary returns’. Here are five others to cultivate or shun depending on your political persuasion as Peace Parties or War Party activists: Stonebridge International, The Scowcroft Group, The Cohen Group, Hills & Company and The Albright Group.

My boat is moored a few yards from the Rye Harbour Road. There was a large sign on the railings facing oncoming traffic when I clambered onboard at eight in the evening. It had not been there when I left Rye for Llangolman ten weeks ago. I feared it would read ‘Boat For Sale’ so was much relieved to discover that instead it read ‘Danger Lorries Turning’. Is it possible that work has started on the Rye Harbour Road Cycle Path?