Margaret Thatcher remembered by her chauffeur Denis Oliver

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/dec/15/margaret-thatcher-chauffeur-denis-oliver-obituary

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We knew each other for well over 40 years. I was a ministerial driver before Margaret arrived at the House of Commons and I drove her many times at different stages of her career. We weren't strangers to each other, put it that way.

We really gelled. Politically speaking, we had the same sort of views. I've always been, not anti-Europe exactly, but against the common market. We'd discuss things as we went along and she would always listen. If I ended up with some information from the radio that she had missed, I used to fill her in. We were on the same wavelength.

We did disagree on one thing: poll tax. When she mooted it in the beginning, I thought, this isn't going to work. It's going to upset a lot of people – particularly me. I had two children at home at the time, and my rates went up from about £800 to £2,000 a year. She used to say: "But it's such a fair thing" – and she would use the example of the old woman with one dustbin paying less than the family with five dustbins next door. She'd say: "That's fair." I'd say: "Think of the Marquess of Bath. He's got that great big estate and he pays the same as I do." That used to bring her to a little bit of a halt – the car would go quiet when I said that.

One thing she didn't have was a sense of humour. I don't think she knew what humour was. You'd try telling her a joke, usually a political one, but you'd get these questions at the end – "But why did he…?" – and it would kill the whole thing. Sometimes you got a little chuckle. I once told her something that Geoffrey Howe had remarked to his driver when Hastings Banda was flying in from Malawi. He used to hold every government office in his country, and Geoffrey Howe said: "He's a one-man Banda." That got a little chuckle. She said: "Oh ho ho, how funny!" But that's as far as it went. She was a very serious woman.

When the bomb went off at the party conference in Brighton, I was the first on the scene. It was after 2am and I had just got back to my room, which was a few floors above hers in the Grand hotel. I heard windows shattering and the doors blew in. I ran down to Lady Thatcher's room. I found her and [secretary of state] Robin Butler packing all the stuff back into the red box: they had been going through her papers before her speech. She was still in her evening dress. I said: "Are you all right, ma'am?" She said: "Oh yes. I'm surprised it's never happened before." What a thing to say!

I was her driver for eight years after she resigned as prime minister. She stayed on as an MP for a little while and then went up to the House of Lords. Towards the end, I used to go to see her, periodically. She was always glad to see somebody. She ended up quite lonely. It was a bit sad. She never had what you might call a great load of friends. She had her regulars – her former adviser Robin Harris, Bernard Ingham, her press secretary – but she wasn't so close to her family.

I hadn't seen her since Christmas. I was going to call in last April, but just before I could, she passed away. Dear oh dear. But we had many good years together. I did enjoy it. Driving Lady Thatcher was a good final chapter to my career.

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