I NEVER thought I would end up feeling nostalgic for the days of John Major.

The former Prime Minister came back into my consciousness last week when he appeared at the Leveson Inquiry to reminisce about his dealings with the media during his seven years in Downing Street.

Younger readers may not have heard of the now-knighted Sir John, who led the country from 1990 until 1997.

After a decent first few years in charge, which included a surprise general election win, his fortunes nose-dived when Britain was forced out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism on what became known as Black Wednesday.

For the next five years the Conservatives showed an amazing ability to generate negative headlines, whether through back-stabbing backbenchers or ministers who misplaced their trousers in situations which they couldn’t quite explain.

By the end Sir John, having been booted around by the press for half a decade, was more a figure of pity than anything else.

And yet, to see him at Leveson last week explaining why it was “undignified” for a Prime Minister to court the press, I began feeling almost nostalgic for this more innocent time.

Amazingly, Sir John managed to meet Rupert Murdoch just three times during his seven years in office. The final occasion, he told the inquiry, came in February 1997 when the Australian mogul had demanded that the Prime Minister turn against Europe.

The centrist Tory refused and the Sun soon set on him.

Three months later Sir John was gone, swept from office by one of the biggest landslides in British history.

But his appearance at Leveson raises the intriguing question: Is the man who brought us the traffic cone hotline actually the most popular living former Prime Minister?

Margaret Thatcher is adored by the right but detested by the left for a long list of reasons, chief among them the miners’ strike.

Tony Blair is loved by no-one, as far as I can tell. Left-wingers hate him for Iraq, right-wingers despise him for stealing their clothes and wearing them with more style than they could ever manage.

Gordon Brown is loathed – a little unfairly in my view – for the deficit he ran up during his three years in charge.

But very few people hate Sir John. He’s the only one of the four living ex-Prime Ministers who could walk into a pub in Huddersfield and have a fair chance of supping a quiet pint without being hectored by an angry punter.

He was a failure as a Prime Minister. But he’s pretty good at being an ex-Prime Minister.