"When we handed over power in 1994 there was not one discrimination law on the statute book," says De Klerk, a heavy smoker with a warm manner and deeply furrowed brow. "In that sense the National Party abolished Apartheid, not the new government." The man who insisted that South Africa could not "tamper with the policy of separate development but must abandon it completely", is now tinkering with history.

Why does the richest man in government, a tycoon who could house, feed and clothe the cabinet if he saw fit (and decorum would allow) live in a hotel? Admittedly, it is not any old hotel. His is not a pad but a penthouse. An eighth-floor, fully serviced, luxury suite leased from the Grosvenor House hotel, on Park Lane, which overlooks Hyde Park. True, it's self-catering, but a BLT sandwich is just a phone call and a few floors away.

Kenneth Starr: Get a sex life of your own and then you won't have to waste so much time and money investigating everyone else's.