Trying to start a career and a life back then in the early 1980s, with hundreds of people applying for every single solitary job, was just awful.

Trying to combine work and motherhood so as to be able to pay a mortgage back then was tremendously difficult and angst-ridden.

Family Credit, flexible working, time off for child care were all things of the future. If you had a young child back then, the only way to survive was to pretend, during working hours, that you didn't. And do your crying in the toilet.

So I really, really don't like her. The grudge remains. She had the power, and she used it to make life hell. Shame on her then and shame on her now, is how I see it.

And yet. I could not have done what her own daughter has done. Jolly Carol Thatcher, she who earns a living doing a bit of this and a bit of that in the media, has decided to put herself in the spotlight by writing a book which reveals all about her mother's dementia.

In the memoirs, due to be published next month, Carol reveals that her mother is, basically, away with the fairies.

This former stateswoman, once famed for her ability to wreck lives on only four hours sleep a night, now has days when she doesn't know that her husband, Denis, is dead.

A form of dementia and a series of mini-strokes have left her living in the past.

She repeats herself, she rambles, she is a shell of the woman she once was.

It's hardly a shock. It has been clear for some time that Margaret Thatcher is not the woman she was. The hints have been heavy, the public appearances cut down to nothing.

But still. For all my dislike of her is personal, I think Carol Thatcher has done a cruel thing to her own mother, something I couldn't imagine doing to mine.

In some ways it can't have been easy growing up in her mother's shadow – maybe that's why Carol has always adopted a clownish persona to counteract the formidable presence of her parent.

On the other hand having the Thatcher name can't have exactly harmed either her of her twin brother Mark in their respective careers, neither of which have amounted to much.

Whatever the reason, Carol has decided to spell out her mother's condition and reveal the secrets of her failing mind to the world, and she has done it to make money.

Instead of protecting her mother she has laid bare her diminished state. Even I, who will always feel she was the worst leader this country has ever had, think this is wrong.

The time for attacking Margaret Thatcher has passed; she no longer has power and influence, she is a confused old woman living with the memories of her former exalted position.

In writing this book Carol Thatcher has stripped away all of her mother's dignity, and no daughter should want to do that.


Beyond the pale


NICOLA Roberts of Girls Aloud was the one who made a bit of a stir at a Girls Aloud concert recently – and for the best possible reasons.

The 22-year-old red head looked startling besides the other members of the girl band because of the colour of her skin.

While the other four were shades of gold and caramel, all tanned and bronzed, Nicola was milk bottle white, displaying the palest skin I have seen, outside of my own family.

And the general consensus was that rather than looking freakish she looked really very good.

The fact that we can look at skin that has not been sunkissed or sprayed with brown dye without actually vomiting is encouraging news for we people born without melanin in our skin.

It means that finally, finally, there has been a seismic shift and that pale people can hold their heads up once more.


Confessions of an Olympics addict


I'M left this week feeling a little hypocritical, and a little bit at a loss as to what to do with the early evenings. I didn't exactly rubbish the Olympic Games, I just didn't register them at all – before they started.

I was prepared to let them pass me by, but then I got a glimpse of the swimming, and the cycling. And I was hooked. An hour in front of the telly with Gabby Logan became my highlight of the day. I became an instant expert on all manner of strange sports – did you see the taekwondo?

My outrage when our girl was robbed knew no bounds. Fortunately the judges came to their senses and calm returned, until that Cuban went and kicked the ref in the head ...

So, instant addiction. But in a week I'll have forgotten everything about every sport I watched and in four years' time I'll be saying once more that I'm not interested in sport – until the swimming starts.