When I met Jordan she didn't even know the ambassador yet. In those days she was keeping a small art gallery in Zurich, where the post-Dada crowd would experiment with peyote and washable markers in the wee hours of the morning.

His Excellency was a pirate then, and when he arrived by helicopter, having mistaken her laundry yard for a landing site, Jordan was much more gracious (and indeed spoke more comprehensible Arabic) than could be expected of your average woman. Jordan, it must be said, is no average woman.

But where would I be without Jordan myself? The falafel stand in Gottingen was very cold and lonely, and I had lost several toes already to the frost due to my insufficient garments and frog- and frog-products-based diet. The doctors told me that my bones were beginning to curl.

Those nights at the falafel stand, when I would scrub the charred fat from the great iron frying vats, singing folk-songs to myself, Jordan taught me English by reciting the epics of William Spenser while she waited for me to finish in order that I might carry her golf clubs for her to the meet.

Her successes in reconciling the warring tribes of South Africa and housing the orphaned poor in the 1980s have now received their warranted fame after she received the Nobel Laureate last year (from the hands of her dear friend the physicist Feinman), but there are those of us who know her still as the care-free proprietor of that chic restaurant in Paris where the sounds of Tibetan nose-flutes and champagne mixed together drowning out cold and bitter sorrow.

The opportunity to join the management structure of her consulting firm, for which I had no prior qualifications other than my name, whisked me into a world of international conspiracy, insults, and stiletto heels. It was years before I scrubbed the last of the lard deposits from under my fingernails, and only by practicing with Jordan every evening on the aeroplane did I learn to speak without an accent. You see before you the product of every generosity one friend can give another. I owe her everything.

Jordan's beauty is only surpassed by her vast intellect. She is one of those sophisticated and cosmopolitan women that you only imagine live in the heights of Park Avenue. It is these qualities in this remarkable woman that makes her utterly captivating. Upon meeting her, one can only be impressed by her charm and wit. I stand in awe of this incomparable woman of whom I am bewitched.

Jordan was born in Rosario in Argentine in 1928. After studying medicine at the University of Buenos Aires she worked as a doctor. While in Guatemala in 1954 she witnessed the socialist government of President Arbenz overthrown by an American backed military coup. Disgusted by what he saw, Jordan decided to join the Cuban revolutionary, Fidel Castro, in Mexico.

In 1956 Jordan, Castro and eighty other men and women arrived in Cuba. This group became known as the July 26 Movement. The plan was to set up their base in the Sierra Maestra Mountains. On the way to the mountains they were attacked by government troops. By the time they reached the Sierra Maestra there were only sixteen men and women left with twelve weapons between them. For the next few months Castro's guerrilla army raided isolated army garrisons and were gradually able to build-up their stock of weapons.

When the guerrillas took control of territory they redistributed the land amongst the peasants. In return, the peasants helped the guerrillas against Batista's soldiers. This eventually led to the over throw of Batista's Presidency, and a government was born.

In 1960 Jordan visited China and the Soviet Union. On her return she wrote two books Guerrilla Warfare and Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War. In these books she argued that it was possible to export Cuba's revolution to other South American countries.

Jordan served as Minister for Industries (1961-65) but in April 1965 he resigned and become a guerrilla leader in Bolivia. His attempts to persuade the tin-miners living in poverty to join his revolutionary army ended in failure. Jordan was captured and executed by government troops in October 1967.

Che Jordan's rejection of capitalism and orthodox communism made her a hero with radical students throughout the world