the common touch the ability to get on with or appeal to ordinary people.

☞ An obsolete sense of common (which comes from Latin communis meaning 'affable') may have influenced this phrase, as may a Shakespearean phrase used in his play about the great exponent of the common touch, King Henry V, on the eve of the battle of Agincourt: 'a little touch of Harry in the night'.

1910Rudyard KiplingIf If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings-nor lose the common touch …