Margaret Thatcher came to power when I was 17 and studying for A-levels. Unlike a colleague who was a pupil at prestigious girls’ school Downe House — where the news of her election was relayed at dawn by an excited housemistress ringing a handbell and shouting ‘Girls! Girls! We have a woman prime minister!’ — I don’t recall anyone at my co-ed grammar school making a particular fuss about it.
At the time, I fancied myself a socialist, even a Marxist. This pose had far more to do with teenage rebellion — my parents were staunch Conservatives — than any proper understanding of politics.
With the arrogance of youth, my friends and I mocked her for her hectoring voice, her old-fashioned hairstyle and her penchant for ironing. But she would prove to be a role model of such power that my generation of young women would be the first to believe that the world was ours for the taking.
It didn’t matter whether we loved her, loathed her or were broadly indifferent to her. The mere fact that she was there — handbagging Michael Heseltine one moment, bringing down the Iron Curtain the next — was enough to imbue us all with the not-so-subliminal message that women really could do anything.
And the great tragedy for my daughter’s generation is that not a single woman in public life comes close to providing such a role model today.
Worse still, in the 23 years since Mrs Thatcher left Downing Street — betrayed and ousted by a group of cowardly male Tory ministers who were desperate not to lose their seats — women have not just failed to progress, in some respects they’ve actually gone backwards.
More... Maggie did more for the workers than her Leftie critics ever did Weaned on the Beeb's hatred, no wonder the young rejoice at her death Of course she split Britain - she HAD toFamous women on the average 17-year-old’s radar today merely convey the message that it’s crucial to remain thin and youthful for as long as you can.
Can you imagine Mrs Thatcher ever announcing she was on a gluten-free, high-protein diet, or boasting that she went to the gym every day? Is it conceivable that she would have countenanced using Botox or fillers to maintain her famously porcelain skin?
Of course not. Yet these are the antics we’ve come to expect nowadays from any woman in the public eye. Even the calm, collected Theresa May has succumbed to the siren call of the diet.
The modern way: In the 23 years since Mrs Thatcher left Downing Street, women have not just failed to progress, in some respects they've actually gone backwardsMrs Thatcher was not without vanity — she always had immaculate hair and make-up — and was an accomplished flirt, as world leaders from Reagan to Gorbachev have testified.
Her attraction was not in her looks, however, but in her passion, intellect and principles. These are the qualities that held so many powerful men in thrall. As she told the Mail’s Ann Leslie in her last year in power: ‘Chemistry is not to do with looks, it’s personality.’
So who — apart from the redoubtable Mary Berry — do today’s young women have to inspire them?
Claudia Winkleman, with her panda eyes peeping coquettishly from beneath her irritating fringe?
Victoria Beckham, with her chest rising and falling faster than the Retail Price Index?
Role model: Who - apart from the redoubtable Mary Berry - do today's young women have to inspire them?Certainly not Louise Mensch, the former Tory MP for Corby fast-tracked by David Cameron, who turned out to be rather keener on wearing Dolce & Gabanna for a magazine photoshoot than in pursuing a political career.
In 23 years’ time, we won’t remember her at all, just as we don’t recall the names of the majority of Blair’s Babes — the 101 female Labour MPs elected in 1997, not on merit but as the result of all-women shortlists.
According to the chattering-class elite — still spluttering with fury that a Grantham shop-girl had the temerity not only to think she could run the country but the courage and tenacity to do it — the lack of female power at the top of politics today is somehow Mrs Thatcher’s fault.
They’re wrong, of course — but they’re still too busy traducing her to notice that they’ve missed the point. She blazed the trail: it was up to us to follow her lead. To our shame, we’ve singularly failed to do so.
‘Is it just me, or is there a serious lack of cool places to go in Central London at the weekends?’ wrote Labour’s rising star and champagne socialist Chuka Umunna on ASmallWorld — an invitation-only online club for wealthy jet-setters.Is it just me, or is there a serious lack of cool Labour MPs these days?
Today's stars don't compare Like Katharine Hepburn and Bette Davies, Audrey Hepburn's beauty was characterful and idiosyncraticAccording to her younger son, Luca, Audrey Hepburn was astonished that anyone found her beautiful, as she thought her smile was too wide, her nose too big and her feet too large (they were a size six).
Like Katharine Hepburn and Bette Davies, her beauty was characterful and idiosyncratic. She considered herself to be immensely fortunate to have had a Hollywood career and viewed ageing simply as part of the circle of life. ‘She was always a little bit surprised by the efforts women made to look young,’ Luca says.
By contrast, today’s stars seem utterly homogenised — whereas Audrey, wrinkles and all, remained completely heart-stopping.
Critics who complain that BBC1’s The Village is too miserable are missing the point. After a Sunday night spent watching poverty, suicide and a man so desperate for a drink that he’ll suck a scrubbing brush, the prospect of the Monday morning commute seems a positive delight
Shout down arrogant doctorsLast week, as part of its NHS reforms, the Government launched something called Healthwatch — an organisation through which we are encouraged to complain vociferously about the NHS whenever we feel we’re not getting good service.
Yesterday we learned that a grandmother who had done just that ended up being led away in handcuffs by police from her GP’s surgery.
Her offence? To complain that the printout of her medical notes, for which she’d paid £10, was not ready.
And why had she asked to see them? Because she’d discovered they stated, wrongly, that she was a heavy smoker who had undergone a hysterectomy and a double hip replacement and suffered from Alzheimer’s and chronic kidney disease.
There are too many doctors who treat patients with an arrogant disdain and who run their surgeries on the assumption that we will fall ill only during office hours, Monday to Friday.
No matter how sick we are, how weak or how scared, that is something we all need to complain about — as loudly as possible.
Broadchurch on ITV is simply gripping. Whodunit? I’m guessing the father of the dead boy’s best friend — but to be frank, I’m just as desperate to know whether David Tennant’s mysteriously ailing DCI Hardy is going to make it through until the end of the series without dying from a heart attack. Or does his collapse at the end of Monday night’s episode mean he’s already dead? Confronted with a truly hideous replica doll of herself, the Duchess of Cambridge gasped in horror and said: 'Does my hair really look like that?'Confronted with a truly hideous replica doll of herself, the Duchess of Cambridge gasped in horror and said: ‘Does my hair really look like that?’
Personally, I thought the hair — long, brunette, shiny and thick — was the least objectionable aspect of the horrible Princess Kate doll. Presumably, she doesn’t mind that it also shows her with emaciated arms, a fake smile and wearing a sack-like dress in teal, the world’s most unflattering colour.
Hungry for successJoan Collins says she’s been on a diet for her entire working life, and she is not alone. Last week, 56-year-old Kim Cattrall (man-eater Samantha in Sex And The City) confessed that she’s been on a diet for 40 years. Meanwhile, former wildchild Amanda de Cadenet — now a talk-show host in California, where she’s being touted as the new Oprah — says she goes everywhere with a rucksack containing her food for the day ‘because I don’t want to end up somewhere where you can only have pizza’. No wonder that, according to a new survey, men are generally happier than women. At least they get to eat!Simon Cowell says he does hundreds of press-ups a day, works out four times a week, has Botox, vitamin infusions and colonic irrigation. Shame that when you spot him in the flesh — as I did when he stopped for me at a zebra crossing recently — all you see are his pudgy cheeks.
