At one o’clock on Monday afternoon I turned on the TV news and heard that Margaret Thatcher had died. My first reaction was the same as when I heard that the Queen Mother had died:
Bugger it, that’s tonight’s television ruined!
Even though I had met her (See Name Dropping), I felt no emotion. The day continued as a normal Monday does until five o’clock that afternoon, when Caroline’s sister, Joanna, arrived with her two boys who were to stay the night with us.
“Tonight’s telly is going to be ruined,” was the first thing I said to her.
“Anything good on BBC1 will be replaced with boring archive film and there’ll be one grey haired old man after another reminiscing about his dealings with her. If I still drank I’d go to the pub.”
“Why? Has someone died?”
“Haven’t you heard?” I was surprised but then, upon reflection, I realised that with two small boys in the car she’d have been unlikely to be listening to a news station on her way up the M1 from London.
“No I haven’t,” she said. “Who? Someone famous?”
“Yes, very famous,” I said. “One of the most famous women in the world.”
“Not the Queen?” she asked, in a hushed voice.
“No, not her. I tell you what. We’ll play Twenty Questions and you’ve had three already because you know that it is a woman, she’s very famous and it’s not the Queen.”
“OK. Is she British?”
“Yes. Four”
“Would Oscar have heard of her?” (Oscar is Joanna’s seven-year-old son.)
“Possibly and that’s five”
When we had reached question nine, Joanna had started to become impatient and, I suspect, a little irritated because I had started to giggle.
“I can’t believe you haven’t got it yet,” I smirked.
“Madhur Jaffrey!” she abruptly shouted out with the kind of certainty that can only come with sudden inspirational revelation.
My giggles turned into raucous laughter. I couldn’t speak for several seconds because I was struggling to breathe and I was in danger of falling off my kitchen stool.
“Madhur Jaffrey!!! Madhur Jaffrey??? She’s a bleedin’ cook! Do you really think that the BBC would cancel EastEnders and replace it with a two-hour programme on the subtleties of lentil-based curries from Rajesthan? Do you?
Can you imagine that they will replace Panorama with Michael Heseltine and Tony Blair talking about the best Curry Houses they’ve ever been to? This person is seriously famous.”
This is the point, after an outburst like that from me, at which Caroline would have just walked off but her sister is altogether calmer and more forgiving. She carried on.
“Was she at the Olympics?”
“No. Eleven.”
By question eighteen Joanna knew that this dead woman was in the House of Lords and was over eighty but she was becoming increasingly frustrated and desperate.
“Has she ever done anything for children.”
Well yes, I thought. She had been the Minister for Education in the seventies and had earned the soubriquet, “Milk Snatcher” after she removed the right of schoolchildren over seven years old to receive a third of a pint of milk every day so,
“Yes and that’s eighteen.”
“Floella Benjamin.”
“Who?” I lost it. When I spoke next I was almost incoherent with giggling.
“No. Floella Whatsername can only be in her sixties. And anyway she’s hardly world famous. You don’t become an international figure for presenting Play School and Play Away for toddlers, do you?
That’s nineteen questions. You’ve got one more and so far, you know that the person who has died was a woman, aged over eighty and was a Baroness.”
“Baroness Young.”
“No and you’ve had twenty questions. It’s Margaret Thatcher who’s died.”
“Oh,” said Joanna. She turned to her boys who were playing on the floor.
“Oscar, have you brought your bag in from the car?”
I hope that Madhur Jaffrey and Floella Benjamin realise what great international figures they have become with a younger generation but I suppose that for some people they possibly did more to change lives than Mrs Thatcher ever did.
After all, I cooked a wonderful ginger, lamb curry last Sunday and my three children all used to look forward to their daily date with Ms Benjamin far more than they did to anything else during their pre school days.
As for Baroness Young, I don’t know very much about her I’m afraid. I’ll have to ask Joanna next time we meet.
