Died with the telly on, 87 and confused, apparently. Invented a way to sell air in the form of ‘whipped’ ice-cream. Came originally from Grantham, once voted Britain’s most boring town and somewhere never featured in an HMHB lyric
9 March 2017
dr desperate
Milk thief. Rejected for a job at ICI in 1948 after the personnel department assessed her as “headstrong, obstinate and dangerously self-opinionated”. Née Margaret Roberts, the same as Barbie’s mother.
9 March 2017
BRUMBSICUIT
Even though the maggots have probably done their work already, I can be happy in the knowledge that I never paid a penny of her poll tax. At least her obstinacy proved to be her downfall; just a shame it took her colleagues 11 years to summon the courage.
9 March 2017
BRUMBSICUIT
By the way, if you ever get to see ‘The Story of the Twos’; Harry Enfield’s and Paul Whitehouse’s brilliant piece celebrating BBC2’s 50th birthday, the Thatcher clip is superb & probably closer to the truth than many other profiles of her.
St Francis of Assisi has been turning in his grave since 4th May 1979.
9 March 2017
paul f
The Story of the Twos was a far better programme than I had expected.
9 March 2017
jodrell banksy
She Was Only a Grocer’s Daughter, as the Blow Monkeys had it. ‘Reagan in drag’ was a succinct assessment.
9 March 2017
GOK WAN ACOLYTE
That comment – and the Enfield/Whitehouse sketch – were surely inspired by Roy Hudd’s joke “She was only a grocer’s daughter, but she taught Sir Geoffrey Howe”
9 March 2017
dr desperate
Referred to as ‘the Grantham grocer’s daughter’ by Martin Carthy in his 1990 anti-apartheid song ‘A Question Of Sport’, which also references her other nickname TINA (There Is No Alternative). Norman St John Stevas allegedly invented the acronym, and lost his job for revealing it to the press.
9 March 2017
dr desperate
Carthy’s 1988 Falklands song ‘Company Policy’ ends: “Ring-a-ring-a city roses, Victors march, and markets bloom. The flame that melted my love’s cheek Come a-dance in the Iron Lady too”.
9 March 2017
jodrell banksy
The Cleaners from Venus’ ‘Living with Victoria Grey’ is my fave thinly-veiled Thatcher song.
Ooh, do you just mean Victoria Grey? (“Living with…” was the album title). Eighties-tastic. That was from the period when my former School Captain (oh yes) Giles Smith was in the band. I’d recommend his book. Peelie did. You can get it for less than three quid now.
9 March 2017
Peter Mcornithologist
Amazed not to witness any praise as yet. Never popular up here but I find her son even more loathsome . Knighthood for getting lost in the Sahara? Or for trying to overthrow a government? So special that he is a non muslim banned from U S A
9 March 2017
dirk hofman
Denis was a captain of the paint and oil industries, awarded an mbe in WW2 for giving some Canadians a lift from Italy to the war in France. He certainly preferred marge, Margaret Hilda was his second wife after Margaret Doris ran off with a Canadian .. He liked to think of himself as a ‘juniper sozzled, right wing, golf obsessed half-wit ‘ as opposed to just a right wing half-wit .. He was awarded a hereditary title, most unusual outside the royal family, for saying ‘ fuzzy-wuzzies ‘ in public more times than Feel the Greek .. Denis rhymes with penis .. Tea, anyone ..?
9 March 2017
jODRELL BANKSY
@CtSO – ah, yes, my mistake, the song was just ‘Victoria Grey.’ I’ll second the recommendation for Giles’ book (though it’s been a while since I read it). Main Cleaner Martin has his own memoir, “This Little Ziggy,” that is also recommended (as well as a brief history of Wivenhoe, and several volumes of poetry.)
9 March 2017
dr desperate
OK, let’s get to the real stuff. Elvis Costello: “I can’t portray my contempt strong enough. I’m not some little kid, so they can say, “There, there now, you’re just some little teenagers having a moment of protest”. I’m a man. I’m 35 years old, and I’m fucking sick of it, y’know, at what’s going on in this country.”
“Well I hope I don’t die too soon I pray the lord my soul to save Oh I’ll be a good boy, I’m trying so hard to behave Because there’s one thing I know, I’d like to live Long enough to savor That’s when they finally put you in the ground I’ll stand on your grave and tramp the dirt down.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-BZIWSI5UQ
9 March 2017
dr desperate
Even Sir Lenworth Henry’s old friends, The (English) Beat: “Our lives seem petty in your cold grey hands Would you give a second thought, would you ever give a damn? I doubt it. Stand down Margaret.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-K6YWX4OL0o
9 March 2017
dr desperate
And, of course, Crass. “So keen to play your bloody part, so impatient that your war be fought Iron Lady with your stone heart so eager that the lesson be taught.” “How does it feel to be the mother of a thousand dead?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UbFaJL3B3M
9 March 2017
CHARLES ‘EXXO’ EXFORD
Wonder how many of those who wrote those wonderful and essential rants against Thatcherism pay their monthly subscriptions to the media mogul who did most to put her there and keep her there? A fair few, I’ll warrant.
I remember asking a well known firebrand politician of the centre-left, seconds after he’d ended a speech by saying ‘we can drive the Murdoch papers out of Liverpool’, if he was willing to encourage people to boycott the bastard’s TV channels. He looked decidedly sheepish and passed on triumphantly through his still applauding audience.
9 March 2017
JUST MARK
Would a male PM acting out the same policies be hated as much?
Leicester’s finest, The Deep Freeze Mice – I Vote Conservative (Because I’m In Love With You)
10 March 2017
Theqwill10
Whenever Margaret Thatcher is mentioned, I always think of a line from The Alexei Sayle Show, where he talks about surnames in the old days deriving from occupations: Cooper if they made barrels, Carter if they made carts, Thatcher if they made people sick.
10 March 2017
BRUMBSICUIT
@Exxo: My colleagues look aghast when I refuse to read their discarded Sun. ‘You a Scouser then?’ is what one asked. Clearly old enough to know why really, but ignorance is bliss.
@Just Mark: That’s a good question, but she really was despicable. Major was just pitiful. Cameron did not seem to know how to present himself, whilst May seems to be escaping most of the Female PM tag, although the furore over her £1K trousers suggests there are still those willing to prod…
10 March 2017
Paul f
My view is that the S*n boycott has been so successful because of its focus, so I don’t go out of my way to bemoan others with their Sky TV – I just content myself that I never knowingly put a penny that man’s way.
And I have that argument about Thatcher getting more stick because she was a woman from time to time with Mrs F, and I’m firmly of the opinion that she deserved every piece of abuse she ever got.
11 March 2017
Huddersfield’s very own… Steve malkmus
Featured on the cover of Carter USM single “The Young Offender’s Mum”, and described Britain as a “Nation of Shopkeepers”- which inspired the Carter album title “A Nation of Shoplifters”. Having only been old enough to appreciate all this years after the fact, I’m torn between wishing I was older so I’d have got it at the time, and being glad I never had to be really affected by her policies.
With regard to the Liverpudlian Sun Boycott, it’s a shame a similar policy hasn’t been adopted by the people of Barnsley after the reporting of Orgreave and other confrontations during the strike. SYP and Murdoch – a poisonous marriage of convenience.
11 March 2017
Brumbiscuit
Actually ‘refuse’ is a tad strong; ‘decline’ suits better, as the offer is meant well.
11 March 2017
dickhead in quicksand
One nickname for the soon-to-be-obsolete pound coin – for being a brassy piece that thinks it’s a sovereign.
12 March 2017
Gok wan acolyte
@hvo…sm If ‘Thatch”, as the unfunny Ben Elton used to refer to her, did use the phrase “a nation of shopkeepers”, she was merely quoting the one usually attributed to Old Boney (q.v.) but which actually originated in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations
12 March 2017
Peter Mcornithologist
Perhaps polarised is the correct term? When I saw George Osborne snivelling at her paupers grave I felt a combination of anger and disbelief .
12 March 2017
hendrix-tattoo
The Tornados “Telstar” was her favourite song.
15 March 2017
liquid len
@HENDRIX-TATOO it used to be mine, too, back when I was 7 and it had just come out.
I still liked it right up the the time she revealed that fact on DID, at which point I expunged it from my memory, MP3 collection, playlists, everything.
Felt a bit like Paul Weller did when Cameron revelaed he was supposedly a Jam fan, the irony of Eton Rifles obviously flying right over his stupid, Brexit-arranging head.
16 March 2017
GOK WAN ACOLYTE
I refuse to let such a brilliant piece of Joe Meek music be sullied by the association – instead I enjoy the irony of Thatcher’s favourite piece being written and produced by a gay man with serious mental health issues
16 March 2017
hendrix-tattoo
@Mr.Len, the only line Cameron got was “and collect your fags”. Wellers response I didn’t write a jolly drinking song for the cadet corps. Telstar must of been Denis and Maggie’s shagging song.
16 March 2017
The Bullet of Escobar
Surprised a bunch of Germans as a 3 year old when I yelled “Aaaaagh Maggie Thatcher” when opening a video case and a pop-up doll with her likeness sprung out.
GOK WAN ACOLYTE
Died with the telly on, 87 and confused, apparently. Invented a way to sell air in the form of ‘whipped’ ice-cream. Came originally from Grantham, once voted Britain’s most boring town and somewhere never featured in an HMHB lyric
9 March 2017
dr desperate
Milk thief. Rejected for a job at ICI in 1948 after the personnel department assessed her as “headstrong, obstinate and dangerously self-opinionated”.
Née Margaret Roberts, the same as Barbie’s mother.
9 March 2017
BRUMBSICUIT
Even though the maggots have probably done their work already, I can be happy in the knowledge that I never paid a penny of her poll tax. At least her obstinacy proved to be her downfall; just a shame it took her colleagues 11 years to summon the courage.
9 March 2017
BRUMBSICUIT
By the way, if you ever get to see ‘The Story of the Twos’; Harry Enfield’s and Paul Whitehouse’s brilliant piece celebrating BBC2’s 50th birthday, the Thatcher clip is superb & probably closer to the truth than many other profiles of her.
(From 27’00” here – CtSO)
9 March 2017
paul f
St Francis of Assisi has been turning in his grave since 4th May 1979.
9 March 2017
paul f
The Story of the Twos was a far better programme than I had expected.
9 March 2017
jodrell banksy
She Was Only a Grocer’s Daughter, as the Blow Monkeys had it. ‘Reagan in drag’ was a succinct assessment.
9 March 2017
GOK WAN ACOLYTE
That comment – and the Enfield/Whitehouse sketch – were surely inspired by Roy Hudd’s joke “She was only a grocer’s daughter, but she taught Sir Geoffrey Howe”
9 March 2017
dr desperate
Referred to as ‘the Grantham grocer’s daughter’ by Martin Carthy in his 1990 anti-apartheid song ‘A Question Of Sport’, which also references her other nickname TINA (There Is No Alternative). Norman St John Stevas allegedly invented the acronym, and lost his job for revealing it to the press.
9 March 2017
dr desperate
Carthy’s 1988 Falklands song ‘Company Policy’ ends:
“Ring-a-ring-a city roses,
Victors march, and markets bloom.
The flame that melted my love’s cheek
Come a-dance in the Iron Lady too”.
9 March 2017
jodrell banksy
The Cleaners from Venus’ ‘Living with Victoria Grey’ is my fave thinly-veiled Thatcher song.
9 March 2017
hendrix-tattoo
“When England was the whore of the world”.
“Margaret was her madam”
http://www.uncut.co.uk/blog/saying-the-unsayable-elvis-costello-tramp-the-dirt-down-and-margaret-thatcher-23924
9 March 2017
Chris The Siteowner
Ooh, do you just mean Victoria Grey? (“Living with…” was the album title). Eighties-tastic. That was from the period when my former School Captain (oh yes) Giles Smith was in the band. I’d recommend his book. Peelie did. You can get it for less than three quid now.
9 March 2017
Peter Mcornithologist
Amazed not to witness any praise as yet. Never popular up here but I find her son even more loathsome . Knighthood for getting lost in the Sahara? Or for trying to overthrow a government? So special that he is a non muslim banned from U S A
9 March 2017
dirk hofman
Denis was a captain of the paint and oil industries, awarded an mbe in WW2 for giving some Canadians a lift from Italy to the war in France. He certainly preferred marge, Margaret Hilda was his second wife after Margaret Doris ran off with a Canadian .. He liked to think of himself as a ‘juniper sozzled, right wing, golf obsessed half-wit ‘ as opposed to just a right wing half-wit .. He was awarded a hereditary title, most unusual outside the royal family, for saying ‘ fuzzy-wuzzies ‘ in public more times than Feel the Greek .. Denis rhymes with penis .. Tea, anyone ..?
9 March 2017
jODRELL BANKSY
@CtSO – ah, yes, my mistake, the song was just ‘Victoria Grey.’ I’ll second the recommendation for Giles’ book (though it’s been a while since I read it). Main Cleaner Martin has his own memoir, “This Little Ziggy,” that is also recommended (as well as a brief history of Wivenhoe, and several volumes of poetry.)
9 March 2017
dr desperate
OK, let’s get to the real stuff.
Elvis Costello: “I can’t portray my contempt strong enough. I’m not some little kid, so they can say, “There, there now, you’re just some little teenagers having a moment of protest”. I’m a man. I’m 35 years old, and I’m fucking sick of it, y’know, at what’s going on in this country.”
“Well I hope I don’t die too soon
I pray the lord my soul to save
Oh I’ll be a good boy, I’m trying so hard to behave
Because there’s one thing I know, I’d like to live
Long enough to savor
That’s when they finally put you in the ground
I’ll stand on your grave and tramp the dirt down.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-BZIWSI5UQ
9 March 2017
dr desperate
Even Sir Lenworth Henry’s old friends, The (English) Beat:
“Our lives seem petty in your cold grey hands
Would you give a second thought, would you ever give a damn?
I doubt it.
Stand down Margaret.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-K6YWX4OL0o
9 March 2017
dr desperate
And, of course, Crass.
“So keen to play your bloody part, so impatient that your war be fought
Iron Lady with your stone heart so eager that the lesson be taught.”
“How does it feel to be the mother of a thousand dead?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UbFaJL3B3M
9 March 2017
CHARLES ‘EXXO’ EXFORD
Wonder how many of those who wrote those wonderful and essential rants against Thatcherism pay their monthly subscriptions to the media mogul who did most to put her there and keep her there? A fair few, I’ll warrant.
I remember asking a well known firebrand politician of the centre-left, seconds after he’d ended a speech by saying ‘we can drive the Murdoch papers out of Liverpool’, if he was willing to encourage people to boycott the bastard’s TV channels. He looked decidedly sheepish and passed on triumphantly through his still applauding audience.
9 March 2017
JUST MARK
Would a male PM acting out the same policies be hated as much?
9 March 2017
featureless tv producer steve
Monster! Monster!
10 March 2017
hendrix-tattoo
I’m in love with Margaret Thatcher….
https://youtu.be/D8fKqyNQMYY
10 March 2017
Bobby svarc
Leicester’s finest, The Deep Freeze Mice – I Vote Conservative (Because I’m In Love With You)
10 March 2017
Theqwill10
Whenever Margaret Thatcher is mentioned, I always think of a line from The Alexei Sayle Show, where he talks about surnames in the old days deriving from occupations: Cooper if they made barrels, Carter if they made carts, Thatcher if they made people sick.
10 March 2017
BRUMBSICUIT
@Exxo: My colleagues look aghast when I refuse to read their discarded Sun. ‘You a Scouser then?’ is what one asked. Clearly old enough to know why really, but ignorance is bliss.
@Just Mark: That’s a good question, but she really was despicable. Major was just pitiful. Cameron did not seem to know how to present himself, whilst May seems to be escaping most of the Female PM tag, although the furore over her £1K trousers suggests there are still those willing to prod…
10 March 2017
Paul f
My view is that the S*n boycott has been so successful because of its focus, so I don’t go out of my way to bemoan others with their Sky TV – I just content myself that I never knowingly put a penny that man’s way.
And I have that argument about Thatcher getting more stick because she was a woman from time to time with Mrs F, and I’m firmly of the opinion that she deserved every piece of abuse she ever got.
11 March 2017
Huddersfield’s very own… Steve malkmus
Featured on the cover of Carter USM single “The Young Offender’s Mum”, and described Britain as a “Nation of Shopkeepers”- which inspired the Carter album title “A Nation of Shoplifters”. Having only been old enough to appreciate all this years after the fact, I’m torn between wishing I was older so I’d have got it at the time, and being glad I never had to be really affected by her policies.
With regard to the Liverpudlian Sun Boycott, it’s a shame a similar policy hasn’t been adopted by the people of Barnsley after the reporting of Orgreave and other confrontations during the strike.
SYP and Murdoch – a poisonous marriage of convenience.
11 March 2017
Brumbiscuit
Actually ‘refuse’ is a tad strong; ‘decline’ suits better, as the offer is meant well.
11 March 2017
dickhead in quicksand
One nickname for the soon-to-be-obsolete pound coin – for being a brassy piece that thinks it’s a sovereign.
12 March 2017
Gok wan acolyte
@hvo…sm
If ‘Thatch”, as the unfunny Ben Elton used to refer to her, did use the phrase “a nation of shopkeepers”, she was merely quoting the one usually attributed to Old Boney (q.v.) but which actually originated in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations
12 March 2017
Peter Mcornithologist
Perhaps polarised is the correct term? When I saw George Osborne snivelling at her paupers grave I felt a combination of anger and disbelief .
12 March 2017
hendrix-tattoo
The Tornados “Telstar” was her favourite song.
15 March 2017
liquid len
@HENDRIX-TATOO it used to be mine, too, back when I was 7 and it had just come out.
I still liked it right up the the time she revealed that fact on DID, at which point I expunged it from my memory, MP3 collection, playlists, everything.
Felt a bit like Paul Weller did when Cameron revelaed he was supposedly a Jam fan, the irony of Eton Rifles obviously flying right over his stupid, Brexit-arranging head.
16 March 2017
GOK WAN ACOLYTE
I refuse to let such a brilliant piece of Joe Meek music be sullied by the association – instead I enjoy the irony of Thatcher’s favourite piece being written and produced by a gay man with serious mental health issues
16 March 2017
hendrix-tattoo
@Mr.Len, the only line Cameron got was “and collect your fags”.
Wellers response I didn’t write a jolly drinking song for the cadet corps.
Telstar must of been Denis and Maggie’s shagging song.
16 March 2017
The Bullet of Escobar
Surprised a bunch of Germans as a 3 year old when I yelled “Aaaaagh Maggie Thatcher” when opening a video case and a pop-up doll with her likeness sprung out.
21 August 2023