One episode in the current season of The Crown opens with Helena Bonham Carter and a man in a dinner jacket she calls “Dazzle” bopping to Bowie’s “Let’s Dance”. Dazzle is Princess Margaret’s latest crush, but they fall out when he tells her he is going to be a Catholic priest.

Like the character of Princess Margaret in the Netflix series, Dazzle is loosely based on a real person. Derek “Dazzle” Jennings was born in 1946 and worked as a senior civil servant. He seemed to know everyone, showing up at country-house dinners, Glyndebourne picnics and student parties. In 1984, at the age of 38, he quit his job to train for the Catholic priesthood.