Monday 8th April 2013

I interrupt my Riviera Cruise to mark the passing of this extraordinary figure.

You must phone the Multis at once. This is the worse day for them.

What to think? What to think? Robert Nevil is being vitriolic. Texts are pouring in from all over the world. Peter Acharya is cruising near Saigon and texting in. But, no, I won’t engage in the much loved anti-Thatcherism of the chattering classes.

Her downfall was inevitable but her drama, verging at times on madness, was thrilling. Never will I forget her explaining to Russell Harty how she kept her bows crisp with tissue paper.  Those were the bows of her blouses. Her defence of the Government in the afternoon, after she had announced her resignation in the morning and which I watched live in its entirety on TV, was the most riveting television the House of Commons has ever known, both ludicrous and magnificent.

Her greatest moment was her  rentré into the Conference Hall after the Brighton Bomb, where she showed a Roman essence of leadership.

She had no sense of humour and no small talk. She got more and more bossy and unhinged. About to mount a tank to be graphed by journalists, she said, ‘Will it jerk me off?’ There was a strange kind of innocence and alarming simplicity of vision. She may have meant no harm. Did she do harm? Would the changes that she brought about have happened anyway, in a rather more diluted and less divisive form? It is easy to forget that she appealed initially, before her shoulders reached Alexis Colby dimensions, across the class divide to the aspirations of the upper working and lower middle class. She led, essentially, although disguised as a Majesty, a Lower Middle Class revolution.  Revulsion over endless, increasingly obstructive and pointless strikes, equally pointless State subsidy, appallingly inefficient and disobliging public services (does anyone remember that it was virtually impossible to get a new telephone line before privatisation) was what swept her to power.

Poor Little Rich Gays of course have inside information. In the early days after she ceased to be Prime Minister she took rather to drink. I once saw her on TV looking a dead ringer for Doll Teardrop with whore-like rouge botches and wild, wrecked hair. Not known at all is that at this time she was discovered by an aide at 3 in the morning, in the kitchenette of the office she had established in some back street near the House of Commons, vigorously scrubbing out the inside of a tea-pot.

When her memoir was published she undertook a publicity tour of unbelievable proportions. She never discussed anything with the Publicity Director but the business in hand (bottled water had to be British).  Except once she said, ‘That’s a very nice suit you’re wearing, dear. Tell me, did it come with those buttons or did you put them on yourself?’

Val has this moment texted in his response to the demise of Mossis Thotcher. It is: ‘Just rejoice.’

Mossis Thotcher, who died today…