Tony Blair, the London School of Economics, Vodafone. Revolutions in the Middle East are forcing many to account for relationships with dictators whose powers are now shaken or shattered. Few organisations of any reach are immune. If you did business only with democracies much of the world would be closed to you.

I, it turned out, was partly employed by Muammer Gaddafi. The Libyan Investment Authority had accumulated a 3.27 per cent stake in Pearson, which owns the Financial Times. Following the recent UN sanctions resolution and the UK government order against Libya, Pearson froze the shares and announced it would not pay dividends to the fund.

Dame Marjorie Scardino, Pearson’s chief executive, said it was “pretty abhorrent” that the Libyan authority had been able to buy the stake but added: “We don’t choose our shareholders, they choose us, so there is a very limited amount of things we can do.”