The class system in Britain is all but gone; which in some ways is a shame since it gave us Vanity Fair, The Eustace Diamonds, Brideshead Revisited and Bertie Wooster among other things.

Fear not, the spirit of Bertie Wooster and Reginald Jeeves lives on in the colonies: in the unlikely personas of Barack Obama and his tastelessly modernised, unimproved version of Jeeves,  Reggie Love.

Love is expected to shadow the President at all times, rarely straying more than a body length away from him during his waking hours.

It is Reggie who holds Mr Obama’s BlackBerry, dials the numbers on his mobile phone, briefs the White House chef on what the President would like for lunch and what he would like to drink.

Every time Mr Obama leaves for a meeting, Reggie hands him his suit jacket and dabs any spots on his tie with a stain removal pen.

Until Reggie Love, bodymen tended to be regarded as glorified butlers, hired for their self-effacing manners and efficiency at managing their employers’ schedules.

Their most public job was handing out souvenir cufflinks engraved with the Presidential seal to White House visitors.

But Mr Obama promises to be a different kind of President – with a different kind of bodyman.

Reggie, who even the notably cool Mr Obama acknowledges is super-cool, has a suitably pithy phrase for his role. He is the White House Chief of Stuff.

The real Jeeves would, to his credit, not understand the concept of ‘cool’; but if he did, he would assiduously shun even the faintest hint of such an abomination.

Obama has acquired all the elitism of the British upper class while managing to avoid any vestige of its unassuming charm, humour and the humility bred from an  awareness of the intrinsic limitations of privilege.