Pizzas galore!

Successive elections and the passing years did little to mellow Helms’s attitude. He supported the Vietnam war (but opposed federal aid for Vietnam refugees) and criticised President Nixon for his rapprochement with China. He dismissed the Watergate scandal as “Much ado about nothing” and irritated the Reagan Administration by holding up key nominations.

In 1983 he staged a filibuster against the establishment of a national holiday to mark the birthday of Martin Luther King, having called King a communist and a sex pervert. During the Reagan Administration’s Iran-Contra political scandal he was, unsurprisingly, a fervent supporter of Colonel Oliver North. Two prime targets for his invective were federal support for what he regarded as pornographic art and abortion. He not only raged against women’s rights of choice but also wanted to outlaw abortion even in the case of rape.

Although denying charges of racism he was prepared to use racist messages in his re-election campaigns, including one notorious TV commercial in the 1990 elections. His video showed a pair of white hands crumpling a job rejection letter with a voiceover saying “You needed that job and were the best qualified. But they had to give it to a minority because of racial quotas. Is that really fair?”

As America’s leading arch conservative, he became the bane of the liberal Clinton Administration, holding up appointments, blocking contributions to the United Nations and blocking congressional funding for Aids victims on the grounds that their “revolting conduct was responsible for their condition”. On one occasion he went too far when he said that the newly elected Bill Clinton was “not fit to be Commander-in-Chief” and that he was “so hated on bases in North Carolina that he better have a bodyguard”. For this he had to apologise.

But with the collapse of communism and his increasing age and ill health, Helms in the late Nineties was no longer the forceful figure of his earlier years. In his final period he was to be seen zipping round Capitol Hill in a motorised golf cart before retiring in 2003 after nearly 30 years in the Senate.

Once asked what he considered his biggest achievement, he replied: “Raising the blood pressure of reporters and editors so easily and so often.”

He is survived by his wife and by two daughters and a son.

Jesse Helms, Republican Senator for North Carolina, 1973-2003, was born on October 18, 1921. He died on July 4, 2008, aged 86