Destiny’s debtor
From Robert Triggs
Sir: May I add a personal footnote to your editorial about Robert Jackson, MP (Leading article, 22 January)? Nearly 40 years ago, in the first week of October 1967, I happened to find myself (as a young man in a hurry at Pembroke College, Oxford) at a table for four in a restaurant, long defunct, in George Street called the Welsh Pony. One of our number was Robert Jackson, then in his first few days as president of the Oxford Union, a first-class history graduate of St Edmund Hall and subsequently fellow of All Souls.
At the end of the meal, he threw up his arms in mock horror and announced that he hadn’t any money to pay his share of the bill. With a flamboyant gesture that I could ill afford, I immediately offered to pay his share for him, upon which he produced a fountain pen and sheet of paper, and wrote magnificently, ‘To Robert Triggs, IOU £3, Robert Jackson.’ I never cashed this document because, at that moment, both of us felt the heavy hand of Destiny on our shoulders, he as a future prime minister, and I, plucked from obscurity, as a visitor to No. 10 Downing Street, around the year 2005, announcing, ‘My name is Robert Triggs, and I claim my £3,’ followed by a photo-opportunity and a glass of the prime minister’s sherry.
Robert Triggs London NW3
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