In August 1986, three months after his resignation, Sir Keith Joseph was spotted on the Number 22 bus travelling along the King's Road in Chelsea. When he was in the Cabinet his preference for public transport had sometimes caused unease among his security staff, and after his return to the back-benches he was frequently sighted on buses going to and from central London. He refused, however, to take advantage of that unselective subsidy, the pensioners' bus pass. On meeting old acquaintances during these journeys he would often engage in conversation on topical issues; when he visited his local supermarket he continued to quiz the staff, as he had done as a minister, and the residents of Chelsea were well accustomed to seeing him on his way home, loaded with plastic bags full of groceries. On this occasion he was engrossed in a book, which turned out to be Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel One Hundred Years of Solitude.

The title seemed appropriate to Joseph's circumstances at the time. By the standards of a normal person he was still extremely busy. In addition to relatively new business interests, including consultancies for Cable & Wireless and Trusthouse Forte, he rejoined the Bovis board as a non-executive director, and continued to give the company full value for his services. In the 1990s he helped to negotiate the contract for the £3 billion Canary Wharf development, and the new chairman Sir Frank Lampl remembered his embarrassment on the occasions when Joseph sat quietly waiting outside his office until he was free.