Thursday, March 24, 2005

Fastest Milk Float In The West

Another quick nugget from the diaries of Janet Jones, the wife of Ivor Richard.
When Jim Callaghan was Foreign Secretary he was woken early in the morning and summoned to the Foreign Office because Turkey had invaded Cyprus. His Government driver was too far away to collect him so he went out into the deserted street and flagged down a passing milk float. The milkman managed to squeeze him in between the gold top and the semi-skimmed and drove him to the Foreign Office on his milk float.

OK, one more, a glimpse of Thatcher in her dotage, now competely bonkers. At a dinner she is opposite the Duke of Edinburgh and displays a novel line in opening a conversation. She bellows across the table "I am very worried about the price of gold!" When this doesn't work, she follows up with the extraordinary assertion that if you draw a line from north to south, just east of India, there are no religions east of that line. The Duke and other guests recited a list of religions east of her imaginary line - rather pointlessly, I should think, because even when she was relatively sane she never let facts get in the way of her beliefs.


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Any new visitors should not be deterred from commenting if they see lots of deleted comments on my blog.
Like several other blogs, I am the victim of nonsensical and abusive comments from one individual. I hope he soon seeks medical help. Until then all I can do is delete them as quickly as possible. All sane and genuine comments are very welcome.

4 Comments:

At 8:01 PM, Blogger Willie Lupin said...

OK, forget sanity, which is an imprecise concept. But a stream of personal abuse and posting comments in my name on other blogs are not things I have to accept.

 
At 12:29 PM, Blogger zaphod said...

I knew she was getting a bit "old" but I didn't realise she was completely bonkers.

 
At 3:25 PM, Blogger Willie Lupin said...

The episode I quoted was from 1997. Lord Richard's verdict was "She's gone barmy. Bonkers. Over the top." Of course, some of us thought she always was.

 
At 12:55 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Recently I heard two men at the National Theatre discussing a forthcoming play at the Haymarket," Ned Sherrin once recalled. "'It's bound to be good,' said one, an incredible optimist. 'It's by the man who writes Mrs Thatcher's speeches.'"

 

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