A nose of wet chihuahua: the rich vocabulary of wine

Some decades ago, there was a Tory MP called John Stokes: eventually, and deservedly, Sir John. He had no interest in holding ministerial office, which was just as well, because he would never have been on any whips’ list for preferment. John was a right-winger: a very right-winger. I once told him that he was the Right Pole: impossible to move any further. He took this as a compliment.

He had many uses, not least of which was in teasing the snowflake tendency among Tory intellectual lefties (or at least, Tory lefties who regarded themselves as intellectuals). ‘John thinks’, I would say: this was before John Major’s eminence. My interlocutor wondered which John I was citing. ‘Stokes, of course’ would come my reply. There would follow aarghs and a demand for crucifixes plus garlic. It never failed to work: the shock, that it is – not sure about the remedies.

There was an element of self-parody.