We shall not see a luncher of his like again

Roy Jenkins had a rousing send-off, and he deserved every word of it. Margaret Thatcher apart, he was the most influential politician of the last 40 years. He was a great reforming Home Secretary. Until Mr Gordon Brown turned up, he was the only Labour incumbent ever to have made a success of the Treasury. He was not just a convinced European. He led what were then the Labour rebels into the lobby in support of the "vote of principle" to join the Common Market. Indeed, it is often forgotten that in 1971 these Labour dissidents held the parliamentary balance. He founded a new party, contested one famous by-election on its behalf and won another, from which he later took his title, Jenkins of Hillhead. He wrote numerous books which were not only good but sold well.

He was also an outstanding luncher, who could have lunched for England, or perhaps for Wales, if they had maintained a team for this purpose. His only rival in the field was the editor of the Sunday Express, John Junor: in other respects a very different character, except in a certain redness of countenance and a fondness for tennis. I was at the Express when I first bought Jenkins lunch. In fact he was the first politician I ever entertained in a restaurant.

The year was 1959, and it was at L'Epicure in Frith Street, Soho, now defunct, which did rather good generalised continental food of a kind sadly unfashionable today, with much flourishing of spirit flames. It was summer, and Jenkins was wearing a well-made but heavy suit with a Paisley silk tie attached to his shirt by a clip. This was his customary garb. It was one of his characteristics that he rarely changed his style of clothing, irrespective of season or weather, with the consequence that he often appeared uncomfortably hot, as no doubt he was.

I ordered a carafe of red wine: Junor was always insistent that his staff and their guests should drink the house wine. My choice owed more to ignorance of Jenkins's more refined tastes than to any courage on my part. Courteous as he was, he made no fuss of any kind. He did, however, turn up his nose, literally so, at the half-avocado that was set before him as a first course. It showed distinct tinges of brown. Jenkins asked me whether I would mind if he sent it back. Of course not, I said, affecting an insouciance which I was far from feeling, being unsure of the correct procedure in these circumstances.

Jenkins was fully equal to the occasion. He had, one felt, sent back more dud avocados than I had had hot dinners. I reposed complete confidence in his ability to handle the situation without any intervention on my part. This he did, in polite but firm tones: "Weally think...past its best..." And the offending fruit was quickly replaced by a more acceptable substitute, whether another avocado or something different I have now forgotten.

Otherwise, all I remember is that he said that neither Harold Wilson nor Iain Macleod would ever lead his party because both inspired the same kind of mistrust. Well, he was wrong about Wilson. They never much warmed to each other. From 1968, Wilson thought that Jenkins was plotting to succeed him; or, if he was not actively plotting himself, he was certainly doing nothing to restrain those who were plotting on his behalf. Jenkins later thought he could have succeeded Wilson in this post-devaluation period but acknowledged that he lacked the will not so much to do the job as to fight for it.

Wilson was also irritated by the assumption in the broadsheet papers and the political weeklies that Jenkins, together with his friend and rival C A R Crosland, were both cleverer than he was. On the contrary, Wilson would say, brandy glass in one hand and cigar in the other: he had secured a much better First at Oxford than either Crosland or Jenkins had.

It was Wilson too who liked to repeat the absurd charge that Jenkins was "lazy". His particular offence was, it appeared, to finish work for the day shortly after seven. As a departmental minister, Wilson would boast, he had always taken work home. But Aneurin Bevan, at least, always denied the accusation against Jenkins. "How could a boy from Abersychan end up with an accent like that," he once asked, "and be called l-l-lazy?"

In October 1966 the spy George Blake escaped from his monstrous 42-year sentence. According to R H S Crossman's diaries, Wilson said: "That will do our Home Secretary a great deal of good. He was getting too complacent and he needs taking down a peg." The Conservatives put down a motion of censure. Quintin Hogg (in the period before he became Lord Hailsham second time round) led for the opposition.

Everyone thought Jenkins would be injured or, at least, badly bruised. In the event it was Hogg who had to retire hurt. By the time Jenkins had finished, it was clear that Hogg had organised the escape personally to make political capital for the Conservatives. Jenkins has never been given credit for his skill as a parliamentarian.

In 1972 he resigned as deputy leader of the party after Labour adopted the referendum on the Common Market that had been proposed by Mr Tony Benn. Crossman, for one (by now editor of the New Statesman), had always been working towards this outcome. He wanted Jenkins not only out of the deputy leadership but out of the party as well. But he died before he could see the fulfilment of this typically destructive ambition.

The seeds of disappointment started to sprout in 1974, when Labour unexpectedly won the election and Jenkins returned to the Home Office – which he did not want – with Denis Healey at the Treasury. When Wilson resigned two years later, he stood in the ensuing election. He came third with 56 votes, behind James Callaghan's 84 and Michael Foot's 90. He promptly withdrew. Callaghan went on to win the third ballot and so become Prime Minister.

We had dinner (at L'Epicure again) after he had just seen Callaghan. He wanted to be Foreign Secretary but had already been in negotiation with the Europeans about going to Brussels. If Callaghan had been prepared to follow his wishes he would have stayed in Labour politics. But Callaghan was not. Jenkins, he said, was too European to be acceptable to the party. Crosland would be Foreign Secretary, while Healey would continue at the Treasury. Jenkins could stay at the Home Office if he wanted to, though Callaghan strongly advised him to take the Brussels job instead. Jim added with his customary jovial brutality that he thought Roy had no future in the Labour Party.

We had arrived at the restaurant in an official car with several menacing men in it. They were now nowhere to be seen. I asked Jenkins where his detectives were and whether they would be all right. "They live off the land," he said. I shall miss him, as will many others too.