Reply #4: Margaret Thatcher plus 'Smelly' and 'Scratcher'

[Snazzy]

Margaret turned out to support Pinochet ('99) in Blackpool, the town I think is related to his Riggs offshore company names.

They have a Sunday story too:

The tale of an ex-SAS hero and his chums Smelly and Scratcher

It sounds like an adventure story: a group with links to top Tories has been drawn into the fall-out from a plot to oust an African president. By Antony Barnett

Sunday July 18, 2004
The Observer

An old Etonian military hero gets a gang together to rid the world of a ruthless tyrant who is accused of having a penchant for eating human flesh. The plan is rumbled and the hero is thrown into a hellhole of a prison and faces the death penalty. But help may not be far away as he calls on his old chums 'Smelly' and 'Scratcher' to ride to the rescue.

It is the stuff of a Boys' Own story or a Frederick Forsyth thriller. But for ex-SAS officer Simon Mann, currently languishing in a high-security prison cell in Zimbabwe, it is a real-life drama with himself in the starring role. And unfortunately for Mann - scion of the Watneys brewing empire - Smelly and Scratcher have not yet turned up to spring his escape. He now faces execution if found guilty of plotting a coup to depose the President of the west African state of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang.

But documents seen by The Observer reveal that this extraordinary story is set to take another dramatic turn. The emergence of a list of names linking Mann to senior figures in the Conservative party has taken an international tale of intrigue and plotting from a forgotten corner of west Africa to the highest echelons of the British establishment.

A confidential letter smuggled out of Mann's tiny solitary confinement cell to his wife and legal team pleads for help from a host of friends including the two he calls 'Scratcher' and 'Smelly'.

....

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/conservatives/story/0,9061,1263902,00.html