HP; we don’t really know about JC. He may well have been married. Which, of course, could also have been a reason to embrace the end.

Please do elaborate. Are you referring to Mandela here or to your fellow guest at the dinner table?

And yes, great men need quim too, or they wouldn’t be great at all. History has yet to produce a genius from among the singlies. Look at Jesus Christ. Spent a life of chastity and had to end it at 33 because he couldn’t take any more of it.

Great men need boobies too.

[Daphne – Some of them also need social skills.]

Call me a hardened cynic, but I have met so many great, humble, famous men who turn out to be total c*nts in private that I no longer believe in the fundamental goodness of great men.

[Daphne – Consider yourself lucky you’re not a woman, H.P., because then your opinion would fall even further when the object of public worship makes a lurid private pass. Even the great and the good are not averse to leering at breasts and making inappropriate remarks. And I imagine gay men have the same experience. I am not suggesting that all the great and the good are men, but it’s only men who behave like that.]

Mandela will be remembered for fighting racism and inequality and ending apartheid in South Africa.

But alas 20 years on and South Africa under the ANC has been reduced from a top world economic country performer to the 22nd place. Public health and education services have been severely depleted whilst pulic sector corruption has shot up dramatically.

White farmers have fled the country and the country lost its rich agricultural legacy.

‘May you burn in hell, the lot of you.’ Tut tut. Such a charitable sentiment; that is, if the place exists.

He was a great man, something we’re not very familiar with but we could at least recognise it.

Gaddafi wasn’t very selective in his friendships. As long as you were fighting colonialism, you were his buddy. Some of his buddies turned out to be admirable and ionic leaders. Others were just poison dwarves.

That has to be pointed out too.