There's something about the very words “Stirling Moss”. His is one of those British names associated with their sport in an almost timeless way like Bobby Moore, Roger Bannister or W.G.Grace.

But, evergreen or not, Sir Stirling is 78, and after I had recorded an edition of the BBC Radio 4 Great Lives programme with him last week (his hero was Juan Manuel Fangio), helping the great Englishman find a taxi seemed the friendly thing to do.

Or perhaps not. I ran across the road to flag down a London black cab, and as the cabbie lowered his window could not resist a knowing “I've got Stirling Moss for you”. All right, all right - but how many times in your life will you get the chance to say that to a taxi driver? Poor Stirling. I fear I wrecked his journey.

The courage history overlooks is the courage history overtakes. Seen from the perspective of changed times, the stand a man took in former times may look timid. But to take it when and where he did may have shown extraordinary valour.

My old friend Jeffery Tillett has died at 80. A Derby Tory councillor from 1957 to 1989, once leader of the council, and Mayor of Derby when the Queen Mother visited the city, Jeffery was at first quietly, then as the years went by increasingly openly, gay. When I became MP for West Derbyshire some thirty years ago, he was a personal inspiration to me.

In other ways a slightly old-fashioned figure, Jeffery was just incredibly brave about sex. With his friend Robin Wood (they became civil partners two years ago) he started and for years ran the Green Lane Gallery, a bona fide gallery and bar that doubled up as a gay venue. Jeffery fully intended this, and everybody knew. Local Conservative associations knew too, but nothing was said. People liked him and respected his work, and as to more private things, shrugged their shoulders in that “none of my business” way that is so admirable in English provincial life.

Unless you were there then, you cannot know what guts it took him and Robin, who moved in together. In a thousand small ways and unremembered places, people like Jeffery edged upward the confidence and self-belief of an anxious gay generation, and edged forward an initially hesitant political campaign. He knew just how far he could go, just how far he could push things, and cut it very fine.

London in 2008 is not Derby in 1979. Now Derby too is changing. But if modern Derby cannot see what was so brave about Jeffery, then among the reasons for that are lives like his.

To the Ken & Boris show on Tuesday, this particular hustings for the London mayoralty at Reuters in Canary Wharf. Both the Labour and the Tory candidates were better than I expected, though the spectacle of the Red Ken I used to know, now in a silk tie, blue striped shirt and cuff links, burbling fluently in Globalspeak about the need for low tax and low regulation, reminded me that if we live long enough we will see everything.

The Liberal Democrat candidate, Brian Paddick, rather overdid the grovelling when he prefaced his thoughts (on public transport) to his City audience with an apologetic: “You may not use the buses but if you go by taxi you will know about getting stuck behind one.”

Boris Johnson's new, sobersided persona is working well; but happily there does remain the frisson of watching a man apparently dipping into a mental bran tub as he speaks, as mystified as the rest of us to know what bauble of opinion or information he may come up with next. And (having been one of Mr Johnson's stable of writers when he was editor of The Spectator) I must challenge Ken Livingstone's complaint that as former editor of a small right-wing magazine, the only administrative decision Mr Johnson ever took was choosing a restaurant for lunch.

This paints an exaggeratedly hands-on picture of the Boris management style. His secretary did that kind of thing. You were just lucky if Boris came to the lunch.

Just when you think politicians are humans, something gives the game away. At that hustings at Reuters, Ken Livingstone remarked that in 20 years, 200 million Chinese will be able to afford to visit London. Therefore across the metropolis today's schoolchildren are acquiring a smattering of Mandarin “so they can help if a Chinese tourist asks the way”.

Does he believe this? No, really, does he? I honestly don't know.

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