I WAS a few weeks into my career in the Parliamentary Press Gallery when I first met Margaret Thatcher.

It was a ‘lobby party’ when the Iron Lady came to bless the reporters who inhabited Westminster with her presence.

I was given a glass of champagne and ushered into the presence of a blue-suited and fearsome Prime Minister I knew only from TV.

A colleague asked about Cabinet splits, so I fearlessly did the same.

She fixed me with a glassy stare and told me icily: “I never cease to be amazed how people believe the nonsense they read in the Press.”

As I dissolved into a quivering jelly, she smiled and said: “You journalists can never see a joke.”

She set off majestically back to Downing Street, and a senior colleague put his arm round me and said: “I didn’t get the joke either.”

In her pomp, this was the effect she had on all around her – a force of political nature few had seen before.

Lady Thatcher was not ‘charming’ like Tony Blair nor ‘ordinary’ like John Major.

The last time I met her five years ago was very different.

She was a small, frail old lady keen to speak to me in a way she never had while in power.

There was humanity and vulnerability that made me see for the first time the caring woman beloved by those who worked with and for her.