Alex Kumi
Monday November 28, 2005
The Guardian
Carol Thatcher has already relieved herself in front of the nation and now reality television viewers have been treated to more intimate details about her life.
But on this occasion Lady Thatcher's daughter merely gave viewers of ITV1's I'm a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here! an insight into life at Downing Street during her mother's premiership.
The former prime minister's daughter, who has already provided one of the series' highlights by urinating in the camp site during the night rather than using the designated toilet, described her mother as a "workaholic" as she and the other campers prepared to discover who would be evicted from the jungle-based show.
Thatcher also touched on the "drama" of the Falklands war and miners' dispute and plans to celebrate the anniversary of her mother acquiring the Iron Lady nickname. She told the campers: "It's the 30th anniversary next year of the Ruskies [Russians] calling my mum the Iron Lady. I really do want to do something because I do think there is a gap, in that we never knew what did the Russians think about her."
She said the moniker had benefited her mother as it meant that she was perceived as being tough. "I saw how hard she worked to get the job. Then I saw she was a workaholic when she got the job ... there was always a drama - either the currency was going down the drain, war with Argentina, Arthur Scargill. It was always a drama, so you just got used to it. You did not like to look worried or nervous because you would have been hauled off to the asylum in the second week."
But, jokes aside, Thatcher suggested her mother's time in power - over 11 years - had taken its toll. When singer Jimmy Osmond asked what Lady Thatcher did for fun these days, her daughter replied: "Not a lot, she's not very well. She's got to a ripe old age, and if you hold down that sort of job for 11 and a half years, something is going to blow a gasket on you, isn't it?"
