After the signing of the Belfast Agreement last year, David Trimble told one of his closest advisers he could never have carried it through without the support and political experience of John Taylor.
Once again, there is a great deal riding on what the deputy leader of the Ulster Unionist Party decides to do this weekend. His vote at the meeting of the party's governing council will influence many others. If he decides to throw his weight behind David Trimble's proposal to nominate members to a new executive, we could be at the start of a new era in Northern Ireland.
There will almost certainly be more glitches ahead, but the promise contained in the Belfast Agreement could begin to bear fruit: the development of a state in which both unionists and nationalists can genuinely feel they are at home. John Taylor is probably the most complex politician in Northern Ireland. I don't pretend to understand him; but I have known him for a very long time and, over the years, developed considerable respect for him. I also believe if he had been elected leader of the UUP in 1995, there would already be a devolved government. This is not to diminish the credit that has, deservedly, been given to David Trimble, but Taylor has a much better understanding of this island as a whole, and of the relationship between its two parts.
He suffered seriously from violence when the Official IRA pumped 17 bullets into him in 1972. Remarkably, he has never expressed, in public at least, any bitterness about his attackers, and has said if the Official IRA could develop into a non-violent political party so, too, can the Provisionals.
Taylor appreciates, better than any other leading unionist, that a harmonious and constructive relationship between Belfast and Dublin could bring enormous benefits on both sides of the Border.
At this stage some readers are likely to snort in disbelief. Be patient. The deputy leader of the UUP has long had an interest in what is happening in this State and, for example, reads our newspapers in a way that would not occur to David Trimble, who really does regard south of the Border as a foreign country - or did until recently.
He has praised, on more than one occasion, how this State has developed since the 1950s into a pluralist and outward-looking society. He has also intervened, in a rather interesting way, in issues here, for example when he appealed to the Government to respect the Protestant ethos of the Adelaide Hospital.
Yet John Taylor is also, almost certainly, the most "detested" UUP politician in this State, to borrow a phrase he once used about Dick Spring. This is due partly to his heavy-handed jokes. "I love to wind people up," he once told a journalist - and people in this State are often easy to wind up. A comment from John Taylor can provoke several weeks of outraged correspondence in this paper.
Remember when he said it was insulting to describe unionists as Irish because "we do not jig at the crossroads, speak Gaelic or play GAA games". That sentence ended, incidentally, with the words "but we do respect these activities and wish you would respect ours". When he described how a surgeon at Armagh Hospital saved his life, he added: "He was a fine Gaelic player too."
But it is Taylor's erratic political behaviour which is a continuing cause for concern. His changing attitudes to the agreement have been, politically, almost schizophrenic. At times he has said he "would not touch it with a barge pole" and then gone on to praise it as crucially important because it has had persuaded Sinn Fein to accept the principle of consent.
Some commentators suspect he and David Trimble have deliberately designed this "hard cop, soft cop" routine. Taylor offers reassurance to unionists fearful of a sell-out, by walking out of negotiations, missing important debates in the House of Commons etc, thus allowing more space for Trimble to defend the agreement. The comparison with Gerry Adams arguing for moderation in Belfast, while Pat Doherty steadies the malcontents in the US, is irresistible.
The most common explanation for John Taylor's public swings of opinion has been that he is under stress in his Strangford constituency and could lose his Westminster seat to Peter Robinson's wife, Iris. This does him less than justice. The UUP deputy leader has a larger responsibility to both communities in Northern Ireland.
We must hope that between now and the weekend, he will have time to re-read the speeches he has made and the articles he has written setting out the benefits of the Belfast Agreement. These include this State's commitment to repealing Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution, the republican movement's acceptance of the consent principle, and the setting up of cross-Border bodies which will encourage greater co-operation between North and South.
John Taylor has also highlighted another factor in the dilemma facing unionists. In an article in the Guardian newspaper just after the agreement was signed, he wrote: "If our team had decided to reject the document, we could have walked out to cheers from many unionists. On the other hand I knew we would have been isolated at Westminster, lecturing the deaf. Unionism would have been more marginalised than ever."
This argument should carry even more weight this week. Mr Taylor must know the compromise worked out in recent weeks represents the best efforts of political brains in London, Dublin and Washington. The consensus in those capitals is that Sinn Fein has moved as far as it possibly can. If unionists throw out this deal for which so many, including David Trimble, have strived so hard they will not easily be forgiven.
Decommissioning is an important issue and one which the two governments are determined must be resolved, but as John Taylor knows better than most, so is peace in Northern Ireland and the opportunity to create the kind of society which both communities deserve. Otherwise, as he has put it most eloquently, there must be the fear of more funerals ahead.