Some politicians never die they just come back as Ukip candidates.

I was vaguely aware that Neil Hamilton, a former minister in John Major’s Government, was involved in the party but the somewhat preposterous idea of him standing for Parliament again seemed incredible.

This is the man who came to epitomise sleaze allegations and who is frequently held up as a poster boy for all that went wrong in those faraway 1990s. Anyone remember the former journalist Martin Bell, clad in his white suit, standing against him in Tatton, Cheshire, and winning by a landslide?

Hamilton, who is deputy chairman of Ukip, was briefly thrown a lifeline by Natasha Bolter’s dramatic decision to withdraw as a candidate in Essex. Mercifully, an expenses row flared up at the last minute and he withdrew his application.

Meanwhile, Westminster hacks were forced to dig even further back into their memory banks as it was revealed that there may be new life in one of Parliament’s most lurid scandals – the Jeremy Thorpe affair. Suddenly, Hamilton’s woes seemed so much small beer.

Thorpe’s death at the age of 85 has seen the raking over once more of a compelling scandal that had everything from gay sex, blackmail, a conspiracy to a murder charge and, centre stage, Thorpe himself – probably the most colourful personality in the land at that time and with an entourage of aristocratic friends.

With his trademark waistcoat and a watch-chain, foppish manner and outlandish hats there has never really been anyone in politics quite like Thorpe since.

It wasn’t just the dress, the wonderful gift for mimicry, Eton and Oxford education and the privileged background – the Guardian reported that “he claimed to be shocked by his mother summoning a servant from the basement of their house to take a few lumps of coal from the scuttle to put on the fire.”

But the Liberal leader had a razor sharp wit and was a genuine radical, though, as is common with our politicians – think Roy Jenkins, Ted Heath, “he never allowed these feelings to interfere with his own enjoyment of a pleasant, well-to-do life, and he was generally happiest when defending the rights of those furthest away from Britain.”

In a soon-to-be-released biography, Michael Bloch’s Jeremy Thorpe claims to shed new light on the murky events which led up to an attempt to silence a former male model Norman Scott who claimed to have had a homosexual relationship with Thorpe since 1961.

However, the gunman, Andrew Newton, who had been hired to meet Scott in 1975, lost his nerve and in a somewhat comic denouement the only resulting casualty was Rinka, Scott’s Great Dane.

The trial at the Old Bailey was eagerly devoured by a fascinated public and although Thorpe was acquitted of incitement and conspiracy to murder on June 22, 1979 he was politically finished.

Social attitudes have changed so much since those days that it is hard to imagine now how the merest whiff of homosexuality could destroy a political career overnight.

Ambitious politicians took their touchstone from the chilling tale of what happened to Ian Harvey, a junior Foreign Office minister in Harold Macmillan’s government, in 1958.

In November he was found guilty of indecent behaviour with a Coldstream Guardsman and lost everything – office, his seat and most of his friends.

It is salutary, perhaps, that claims of fiddling expenses nowadays, are far more likely to see politicians dismissed than sexual shenanigans.