When he finished his lecture, Thornton said to him, “I think you personality is quite different from those of other successful entrepreneurs in our eyes because yours is quite soft and not hard.

Based on these results, Dr. Thornton and his colleagues concluded that the evolution of the receptor unfolded in two chapters.

"We were surprised to get a dead receptor that wouldn't respond to any hormones, because those same states had existed in the protein a relatively short time before," says Thornton.

But the prospect of the top job being filled by Mr Thornton, a strong character unlikely to play a low-key oversight role as chairman, appears to have rankled with Mr Geoghegan.

But Miliband and Thornton are still young.