Thatcher the vote snatcher (Mrs T's daughter on reality TV show)

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Thatcher the vote snatcher

Sympathy for her being Mrs T's daughter may yet help Carol become queen of the jungle

Mark Lawson
Friday November 25, 2005
The Guardian


Almost 15 years to the day since Margaret Thatcher spilled one bodily liquid live on television - blubbing as she left No 10 - Carol Thatcher this week unleashed a stream from the other end, becoming, on I'm A Celebrity ... Get Me Out Of Here!, the first British prime minister's child to urinate during a TV show.

This was not how the media was expected to mark the anniversary of the weeping Thatcher's departure. But - coinciding with a Conservative leadership election in which both main candidates have seemed terrified of mentioning the name of the party's biggest modern historical figure apart from Churchill - the press and public reaction to the caught-short daughter in the jungle is an interesting measure of how far Britain has come from Thatcherism.


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It's always difficult to judge how a contestant on IACGMOOH is doing during the first week. Carol has twice been selected by public vote for humiliation rituals, which may be weighted by phone calls from former mining communities and students from the 1980s. But newspaper coverage, reactions from other contestants, and phone-in and anecdotal evidence suggest that she has been the star of the first stage. She may even have a chance of winning a vote, which would mean little to her mother but, you suspect, much to her.

This is the latest stage in a very strange life. With the exception of the boy Mark - generally regarded as the evil twin for his arrogance, hapless navigation during rallies and mysterious business deals - the popular attitude towards Margaret Thatcher's family was often unexpectedly warm among all but her most rabid political detractors. Denis Thatcher was raised to the status of national treasure, and became the subject of surely the warmest satire ever run in Private Eye magazine. Carol also generally got a good press, even in the anti-Thatcher media.


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http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1650592,00.html