Iron ladette

KATE, I've been well clobbered!" Carol Thatcher announces to her friend, the broadcaster and journalist Kate Adie, who is staying at the same Edinburgh hotel – they have both been in the city promoting their latest books.

"Clobbered! Absolutely clobbered!" repeats the erstwhile Queen of the Jungle in that posh English boarding school accent that sounds as if she has half a pound of plums in her mouth. "I haven't read any of the stuff that's been written about me, but Jackie's just told me about various columnists and radio bods who have had a go at me for writing the truth about my mother's dementia. What a hoo-ha!"

The chapter dealing with Baroness Thatcher's descent into dementia in her daughter's memoir, A Swim-on Part in the Goldfish Bowl, has been serialised in a Sunday newspaper. The morning after, it made banner headlines. One right-wing female columnist fumed that for years those closest to the Iron Lady had "nursed her secret" and accused the "opportunistic" Carol Thatcher of "a personal betrayal" and "a terrible invasion of an old woman's privacy". And yet, Thatcher sighs heavily, her 82-year-old mother's health problems are hardly breaking news. Clearly these people don't read their own newspapers.

She first spoke about the former prime minister's frailty and her fading memory in 2005 when she gave an exclusive interview to the very newspaper that is now castigating her, when she emerged victorious from the Australian outback in ITV's I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here!, becoming a national treasure overnight after courageously nibbling on a kangaroo's knobbly bits. "The People's Iron Lady", the BBC's Alan Little called Thatcher, introducing her at last month's Edinburgh International Book Festival.

The 54-year-old journalist, broadcaster and bestselling author discussed her worries about her mother's fragile health in some depth in that 2005 interview, explaining that sometimes she could not remember the start of a sentence by the end of it and that she no longer read much because of her memory loss.

She also revealed that when people said how distressing it must be to see her mother's decline, she would reply that it was much more frustrating and annoying for the woman who had once been the most powerful in the world – "with a memory like a website" – to lose her short-term memory, all of which she repeats in her memoir. She adds that she believes her twin brother Mark's well-publicised problems in Equatorial New Guinea, where he was arrested on charges of attempting to organise a coup, worried her mother terribly.

After admitting buying a helicopter gunship for use in the alleged plot, he was fined £265,000, with a suspended prison sentence. "I was annoyed with my brother for getting embroiled in it, but my main concern was for our mother ... In her state of health, it was far from helpful to have such a nagging anxiety always at the back of her mind," Thatcher writes.

Her brother has remarried and lives in Spain. "We don't see each other a lot, although I saw him at my father's sister's funeral at the beginning of August. He travels a lot; I travel a lot. But we've never had that bond that twins are supposed to have. I just happen to have a brother who is two minutes older than me rather than two years – that's how unidentical we are. And we lead very different lives."

As Adie stops by our breakfast table to discuss the media feeding frenzy in the wake of Thatcher's "revelations", Thatcher smartly points out that if she had not mentioned her mother's dementia in her book it would have been dishonest. "Look, I was brought up to tell the truth. I was brought up not to cover up. People have said many things about my Ma but no-one has ever said that she told lies. People knew they could believe her. And I don't lie. Now I'm damned if I do, damned if I don't," she says, jangling an armful of baubles, bangles and beads with which she is bedecked, even at this early hour of the day.

She continues: "My mother's dementia is such a small part of the book – and it's not a book about her. After writing a bestselling biography of my dad, Below the Parapet, about what it was like to be Sir Denis Thatcher – first male consort at No 10 – I wanted to write a memoir about what it's like to be me, to have the role of Daughter of Margaret Thatcher and to have one of the most famous surnames in the world – which, by the way, I suddenly find I am having to spell for people since it's a generation since my Ma was PM, 18 years in November.

"I wanted to show in my memoir, which I've written to mark the 30th anniversary next year of my mother becoming prime minister, that it has not been a non-stop fairy-tale for her – the way she was booted out of No 10, for instance, and the way she is now, and the fact that she keeps forgetting that my father is dead.

"Why wouldn't I write about Ma's problems? How could I write that everything's hunky-dory? Was I supposed to leave out of my book the fact that my father died in 2003? I was very, very fond of Denis. You say it as it is or you don't bother. I can't pretend that my mother's dementia isn't there. I'm not a pretender. With me, what you see is what you get."

Thatcher turns to Adie, who has heard some of this and says in her loud, foghorn voice: "If I get clobbered, so what! I don't have egg-shell sensitive feelings."

The interview is suddenly on hold as these two formidable women bemoan the toxic nature of certain newspapers, the decline in journalistic standards and the sheer incompetence of the media, both print and broadcast. It's a brilliant, off-the-record discussion as the pair enjoy a good old rant, getting stuck into media moguls, mendacious newspaper editors and TV bosses who believe that news is no longer important. "So you are in a no-win situation, Carol," Adie tells her.

Draining her cup of coffee, Thatcher says: "Well, if I worried about everything that people have said about me in the newspapers, I would have ended up in the loony bin several decades ago. I just don't read it! So what! I remember all the lessons Dad taught me about second-hand fame. I learnt a lot from him. Impeccable manners, for instance. That's why I can still smile when I hear yet another kangaroo's testicles joke. In any case, after I'm a Celeb ... I was only famous for about a fortnight.

"The good thing about second-hand fame is it all disappears – the day came when my mother was sitting home alone eating poached egg on toast rather than working with her despatch boxes or speaking at some fabulous banquet."

She pauses, then says, thoughtfully: "You know, we've always admired the way the Reagan family dealt with the former president's Alzheimer's. They were very open and dignified about it. So, in 2002, we went public about my mother's health, when her office announced that, after a series of small strokes, she would make no more public speeches.

"As a family, we've made no secret of the fact that Ma is frail, that she has good days and bad days, that she can't remember a newspaper headline she's just read but that she can reel off her favourite wartime tips for jazzing up powdered egg and tinned Spam."

In any case, Thatcher says she's at the age when many of her friends are careering around the country looking after their sick, elderly parents.

"I'm lucky. My mother happens to live in central London – as I do – and she is very well looked after. She's always had a driver and a 24-hour police guard, not to mention having enough funds to afford the appropriate nursing care."

Does she find it ironic that the late president Reagan and her mother, with their special relationship, have both succumbed to dementia? "Do I think a career in politics makes it more likely that you are going to suffer from dementia or Alzheimer's?" she says (her mother taught her to repeat a question in order to gain time to think about her reply).

"Look, I'm not a medic, I don't know, but I can surmise. In my mother's case she worked absolutely flat out all hours God sent with all of the pressure and all of the stress for 11 and a half years. If you do that, I think there is an increased likelihood a fuse is going to blow.

"Payback time! She bashed mind and body – it goes with the job. But Ma was very lucky, she was born with brains and stamina and ambition – and her place in history is assured."

Nonetheless, she admits that neither of her parents handled old age and each other's ailing health well. Sir Denis Thatcher died of pancreatic cancer in 2003. "Theirs was a marriage of true minds – they met on a blind date. Everything just gelled for them. Dad's death was a huge shock, but when I look back I'm grateful that it was mercifully quick," says Thatcher whose book is interspersed with anecdotes about her gin-and-tonic tippling father's wit and wisdom that are much funnier than anything that appeared in Private Eye's legendary Dear Bill letters. "Dad made it to 88 on gin and cigarettes," she says, rather proudly.

BOUNCY and blonde, like Tigger on speed, the Honourable Carol Jane Thatcher also believes in living life for the moment. "At my vintage I've decided to live it up, to go for it, to have lots of adventures and to grab them while I still can. That's why I went into the jungle and did I'm a Celeb... To stir up the treacly swamps of middle age. And it did, it did! The big plus of being middle-aged is I don't care what anyone thinks; I'm not easily embarrassed. I've had a great three years – although I've always enjoyed life hugely, even my tiny little role in the goldfish bowl."

Childless, she's never married and never wanted children, although she did share her life for a while with Marco Glass, a former ski instructor 14 years her junior. The relationship has ended, but they remain firm friends. "It had run by its sell-by date," she says cheerfully, downing her third cup of coffee. "My private life isn't very interesting at all, so I haven't written about it in the book. What was I supposed to say? 'Had a date Saturday night, went for pizza ...' I think it's far more interesting to give a behind-the-scenes peek at No 10, where my Ma and Denis spent 11 and a half years."

She and Glass still share an apartment in Switzerland, however, living very amicably on different floors in a flat she rents and regards as a holiday home, although she's always travelling, usually solo. "I'm a travel nut."

At present, she's in training for two weeks of mountain biking around Costa Rica and Panama in November. "It's a holiday. I like adventure holidays and I love cycling. To mark the 20th anniversary of the Russians calling my mother the Iron Lady I cycled from St Petersburg to Moscow, 700km, and I've done a charity bike ride along the course of the River Nile. So I've been training hard for Costa Rica by pedalling up and down mountains in Switzerland for a couple of weeks."

A travel writer in a previous existence, she works the eccentric, rather batty spinster persona very cleverly, although she also comes across as the Iron Ladette since she freely admits she enjoys a drink or three.

"When I went to Australia for I'm a Celeb... I thought it might entail hanging out in those nice winebars around Sydney Harbour, although I'm actually a real workaholic. I wonder who I get that from."

She grew up with the example of two professional parents who both worked hard. "I was six when Ma became an MP, and I had a happy childhood, rather suburban, but very purposeful and really rather privileged. But I've always been happy in my own skin. I like to quote Abraham Lincoln, who said that most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be. I'll drink to that.

"These days everyone is so quick to whinge. I don't see the point, especially when you hit the wrong side of 50. You may as well get on with it. I've absolutely no regrets about never marrying and not having children. I regard it as a huge relief. I don't dislike children, I'm rather intrigued by them. Time and resources are finite and you have to decide which route you are going to go down. I have friends who have four or five children and have happy lives, but I've probably seen more Roman ruins than they have," she says with a raucous giggle.

"Am I growing old disgracefully? Well, I'm not putting my feet up. I am rather inclined to accelerate because obviously I've got less time. And I don't look back because I'm not going there."

Interview over, we discuss handbags. What else? Her mother's handbagging is the stuff of legend. "I adore handbags," says the exuberant Thatcher, rooting around in her sinfully scarlet bag. "I've lost count of how many outrageous bags I have, many of which rarely gained maternal approval. A conversation with my mother might go something like this:

"'Where did you get that, Carol?'

'Oh, I spotted it when window shopping.'

'That, dear, is why I never walk.'

"That's Ma, the pragmatic, purposeful woman I'll always remember – and mistress of the put-down."

A Swim-on Part in the Goldfish Bowl: A Memoir, by Carol Thatcher, is published by Headline Review, priced £18.99.