Ringer leaves me to pay court to Elstree, theatrically kissing her on each cheek, as she air kisses him back. He shakes the toy boy’s hand and then ambles to the table on the right, where he whispers in the ear of a pin-stripe suited, tanned and white-haired seventy-year-old, who guffaws in an exaggerated way. He is Sir Alistair Jensen, the billionaire tycoon who, in the deal frenzy of the 1980s, built the biggest conglomerate the UK had ever seen, Jensen & Co. He’s spent the last five years dismantling it, after investors turned against him, but still has more money than he could spend in several lifetimes. Ringer is, of course, on bosom-buddy terms with him too.

If there is a thread that links these people (excluding the anonymous toy boy), it is that they long for what they think of as the simple certainties of Margaret Thatcher’s Britain – where there was seemingly no higher calling than making as much money as possible and conscience was an anachronism. The 1980s changed everything, and from its dismantling of state industries and workers’ rights the legend of Bob Ringer was born. He had spotted Thatcher’s potential in the 1970s, long before Tory MPs had any inkling she would one day be their leader. He cultivated her, lobbied for her, and when his investment in her paid off, he made a fortune from his proximity to her, to power.

His winning streak didn’t end with her downfall. She’s gone, but he’s almost as powerful as ever. The great and the good (and the bad) all share their secrets with him, because if anyone can manipulate the media and public opinion to save their reputations, it’s Ringer. He has a direct line to the news desks of all the important papers. If one of his clients has been a naughty boy, shtupping a twenty-three year-old secretary, and the Globe has pictures of her leaving his London house at 5 a.m., Ringer will telephone the editor and offer up some other exclusive on another client. Voilá, the story vanishes. For Ringer, every conversation is a deal being negotiated, a bargain being struck. Often an unholy one.

He is one of a small number of London fixers always to be found in the shadows wherever there’s a crisis to be quietly sorted, or power to be brokered. He is one of the elusive ten or so people who know everything there is to know about what is going on in business, the City, government.