Interviewer
One thing that I really wanted to ask you, and this is a very feminine sort of question I think, is that men in your position in political life, the longer they stay in office the fatter they tend to get, the more haggard they tend to look, the older they get, and you have done the complete opposite. What is your secret for having done that?
Prime Minister
I have no idea. I am just naturally very fit. I work extremely hard, I work very long hours, I work because I like the work I do I think almost more than anything else so it is no difficulty to me to turn round and do the next thing and to keep going and because, do not forget, the things we are doing are exciting. [end p1]
They are all about the future. We have just been having a big meeting about education. They are exciting the things we are doing and because the whole of the policy is saying look, more and more you devolve responsibility to people who are nearest to the tasks that need doing.
So Government decides less, Government sets the framework of the things which have to happen and the various laws which must be observed, say in education they have got to be educated at certain ages up to certain standards and under a certain curriculum and now we are saying, right, the parents and governors can administer the school, provided that they do it to those standards. They can have the budget and administer it so you are delegating down and it is exciting because all of a sudden people are rising to the opportunity.
Interviewer
So it is your excitement and your interest in your work …
Prime Minister
It is the excitement, the interest, the future, enlarging opportunity for young people and the future is a great land and this is what we are doing. Then as you know we are doing a great deal about the environment. [end p2]
I think the most difficult thing that we have to face at the moment, after we have done so much in increasing the numbers of police, in increasing the equipment, increasing the pay, increasing almost everything they need, and we watch that very carefully, much much better, morale high, excellent service. Why is it that crime is going up and what you are up against is fundamental human nature and why do people not now, in a very much more prosperous society, observe the standards, the certain behaviour and courtesies, because courtesy, you know the natural courtesy, the politeness from one to another, gives us a very much better environment, background, in which to work.
Our people are no longer observing those courtesies to the extent they were. We are getting, I am afraid, more breakdown of family life and why? Because I think all of this is having an effect on the crime rate but you really are up against some of the real problems of human nature.
Years ago there was so much to do, on better health, on education for everyone up to the age of sixteen, on better incomes. Now you have got much better health, we have an excellent Health Service, you see it when we have or most people see it when they are using it, when we have a disaster of the kind we had. we have marvellous services, the police, fire services, ambulance, health service. [end p3]
So you have got excellent services. Everyone goes to school until the ago of sixteen, you have eleven years compulsory education, you have more money being spent on it, more teachers, so you have got your health, your education, your housing very much better, more housing, a much higher standard of living. So when you have got all of those things, how do you influence people to live up to much higher standards, not only of education, but of thought, of observing the law, and going way beyond the law as so many people do but in kindness, thoughtfulness, courtesy in one towards another?
We are moving into a different kind of problem but it is every bit as interesting, fascinating, important, exciting for the world of the future and you ask me: “How did I do it?” - I have no idea, I have no idea.
But you know I have so often noticed that the woman with quite a large family, she often looks a slim little thing, quite young, and I think those of us who really love our work, whatever it is, if we have a vocation and we want to do it then I think you have a motivation and interest that just gives you an enthusiasm for life and a zest for life which I suppose shows in your face.
Interviewer
Is it true with you then the old saying “the more you do the more you can do”, do you find that? [end p4]
Prime Minister
Oh yes, very much so, very much so. You cannot suddenly change and do everything but the more you do, the more you, yes, and I will tell you partly why, because the wider your experience gets and I suppose 70 or 80 percent of the work you do each day is work with which you are very familiar and work you know immediately just how to tackle it and what to do and then some things come up, or something new and different comes up, something you have got to think through or handle differently or think through the new policies for the future, but about 70 percent or so is work you are very much used to handling and the handling of it of course increases the speed and ease with which you do it.
Interviewer
You obviously love your job and get great satisfaction from it.
Prime Minister
Oh, enormous.
Interviewer
What would you have done if you had not gone into politics? [end p5]
Prime Minister
I would have carried on in the law which I was, I first was in science for which I am eternally grateful that I had a scientific training and worked in science before I came here because so much of future industry is science-based, not only in the new electronic products and chemicals and pharmaceuticals, but so many of the processes of traditional industry are science-based.
Some of the processes the police use, although they are mainly dealing with human nature, some of the processes, the things which enable them to be more efficient, the equipment is science-based. So this is why we are saying, for example, in the schools that everyone, but everyone, has to have both a scientific and technological training.
So much of the equipment in the home is now science-based.
Interviewer
You need a degree to work some microwave ovens don't you?
Prime Minister
Well, you certainly need to know what you are doing with electricity. [end p6]
Interviewer
Do you ever feel that on the day you took your eleven-plus, if you had had a cold or flu or something that perhaps the whole course of your life and certainly the lives of others would have been drastically changed?
Prime Minister
I think that if you are not well that is very much reported with your paper. That is very much taken into account and they will take into account your school record as well, which is important and right.
Prime Minister
You seem to be a very single-minded person. Have you always been single-minded, were you single-minded as a child, were you an industrious child?
Prime Minister
I was a child interested in so many things, interested in what was going on in the world around, reading about it, always discussing it, we discussed it in the family. You see in those days, we did far more discussion, debating, ourselves. We had not a television in our sitting room. Radio was only just coming in. Radio opened up a new world because we could listen to marvellous music, we could listen to well known names whom we read about [end p7] in the newspaper, giving talks. There was a programme called &oq;Encounter’ I think on a Friday evening, I remember Lord Justice Birkett talking on that, we used to listen to it and my parents, my Alfred Robertsfather, who had had to leave school at the age of thirteen but who was a highly intelligent man, was very anxious that the next generation should have what you have missed.
So he and my Beatrice Robertsmother were naturally very anxious we should benefit from all the education, cultural things, so yes we did read books, yes we did talk about them in the family, yes we did go to any lectures, university extension lectures, about the political scene, current events, parts of history. We did belong to the Music Club so any pianist or string quartet or singers who came to our town, we went to listen to.
This was very much because my parents knew the importance of education, realised that my father had not had it, although he was the best read man, I think bar one, that I ever knew. I think Edward Boyle, whom I knew, really did more reading because he had more time. But my father was one of the best read men that I knew and therefore was a very well self-educated man.
But you see ours was an active life, it was not so much a passive sitting down life watching things in the evening, it was doing things. [end p8]
Interviewer
And your parents obviously took quite an interest.
Prime Minister
Yes. [end p9]
Interviewer
Would you say, then, that all that influenced you and moulded you into being the sort of person you are now?
Prime Minister
Oh yes. It gave opportunity and every child has some interests. It is a question of detecting them and using them, and for that you have to stimulate a mind to get an interest, but do not quite know where it will come. Some children, you can naturally tell are very musical, some love amateur dramatics, some know exactly what they want to do - they might want to run a shop because they are used to being with the parents who run a shop, they might have a fascination for farming, maybe have a fascination for nursing, some wish to go into the Police Force. All of a sudden, in the varied things you do at school, you should be able to [end p10] stimulate a child to take a considerable interest. There will be something which he or she is very very good at. It may be sports, it may be debating, it may be drawing.
Interviewer
What would be the most important thing that parents should remember when they are bringing up a family? You brought up a family, you are about to be a grandmother.
Prime Minister
First, I think the parents are responsible for setting the general standards of behaviour. This matters very much. We all have to have rules by which to live. We break them, of course! You know, we measure ourselves by the extent of our imperfections, not the other way round, but you have got to have some rules, because if you live together you have got to have some rules merely as a matter of courtesy to others so you can live together. So if you expect each person to be respected, you have got to learn to respect the other person, respect that they might want to do things, so you have got to have certain rules of courtesy by which to live, rules of cleanliness, standards to upkeep. Now, those are mainly set by the home. By the time you have got to school, they are mainly set. [end p11]
Where they are not set - because some children just do not come from the best homes or homes which do not act that way - then you rely tremendously on the school.
The other important thing is that the parents and the schools pull in the same direction, work together, and that is why we are trying to get them working much more closely together, because these set the standards, these give the children the opportunity, these spot the talents and just enable us to try to get the best out of each child. But you cannot expect the teachers to make good everything that the parents should have done.
When the children coming from difficult homes are the exception, of course you can cope. You can cope because the main body of children coming to your school should come from homes that are where these standards have been set and therefore you can deal with the exception always, but it is parents and teachers working together and the general standards which are observed by those who are responsible for running the town or the village.
Sometimes, they will say: “Look, young man! We do not do these things here! It is no good you just dropping all that litter; we are proud of our park, we are proud of our streets, we are not going to have it! Now you will not like it! Now, just pick it up! [end p12]
Interviewer
So the decline in standards in some young people today then …
Prime Minister
Some young people. Let me put it this other way:
You have got a very substantial increase in standards with many young people and many of them are saying: “We went through a period when we did not have enough discipline. We were not taught the rules and we miss this and now we realise the importance and we are going to make certain that our children have it!”
Interviewer
It is important that children receive discipline?
Prime Minister
Of course there are always some youngsters who want to flout the rules. Provided they are a small minority and the rest of the society will not have it &dubellip; you see, now you have got the big neighbourhood schemes setting up - very good they are - people taking more responsibility and if they see something happening, someone is doing this but it is not right, frequently they will go out and say: “Now look! We do not do this!”
Interviewer
It is a return to the old community spirit of old? [end p13]
Prime Minister
Yes, and if you do it, other people will have no respect for you at all and may treat you in the same way. If you want people to respect your house, your garden, you look after your own and you make certain that you respect other people's in precisely the same way, and the way in which you respect them, it is a “do as you would be done by” life and if you expect to be respected yourself, you must respect other people. It is a kind of reciprocal … it is a giving and taking, but you each both have to give and take. It is not one doing all the giving and the other doing all the taking.
Interviewer
When you get home from work in the evening after a really bad day, what is the first thing you do? Do you take off your shoes and put the kettle on or do you just carry on working?
Prime Minister
It depends what pressure you are under. You see, at the end of the day might be &dubellip; one night this week it was a quarter to twelve when I got upstairs to actually start … it was about twenty past two that night when I finished the boxes … that was an earlier night this week. Last night, it was just before midnight. If Denis ThatcherDenis is in … often in the evenings we have engagements to go to or across in the House of Commons, or you have to go to a speech, to a [end p14] dinner, you have to meet people, and quickly go upstairs, you have to change, to get out something, you have to quickly look up the speech or you have to quickly think what you are going to say, or it is a major speech when it has all been made out several times a year. Otherwise, you just go upstairs - “Oh, I have been on my feet all day!” Now, being on your feet all day standing is much more difficult than being on your feet all day walking or running around. You just kick off your shoes and sit down and then you will have a drink of some sort - it may be coffee, it may be just a glass of sherry or something. Just to sit down. It is not so much what you have, it is the fact that you are sitting down. It might even be a mineral water, which is very refreshing. Just to sit down and talk for twenty or twenty-five minutes before you go, you then recharge the batteries and you are off again to do the next thing.
Interviewer
Has being so much in the public eye and in the constant glare of publicity put strains on your marriage or do you have the sort of marriage that &dubellip;
Prime Minister
No. We are both very very active. We both have our own interests. We both recognise that we have our own interests and we must pursue our own interests, and we come together for many many things and we do a lot of things together. [end p15]
So you have got both things: you have got doing things together. We are lucky, we have a marvellous family and although we are not really very close together, we keep very close contact. There are such things as telephones, there are such things as just remembering that you want to know how they are and they how you are and ring up and say: “Don't worry! We will not be about but we have got to go away!” Of course, Mark ThatcherMark is away, but we do keep contact.
Interviewer
And that is important?
Prime Minister
It is recognising that as well as being part of a marriage, you are each individuals with your own interests, your own talents - not resenting them in any way. Right! Yes! You are going off to have an evening with your friends or do your thing, and I have work or my thing to do, and then doing quite a lot together as well. [end p16]
Interviewer
Among the circle of friends that I have, the friendships between we women are very important to us. There is a group of about six of us. We get together regularly and we share all our private thoughts and feelings and we support each other a good deal. We have nights in with the girls and a good old natter. Is there time for that kind of thing in your life?
Prime Minister
Oh yes. There has to be. First, because you come into contact with so many, inevitably you always have several who are your particular friends. You can say: “I am so sorry! Could you do this for me?” and immediately: “Yes, of course!”
Interviewer
So you have got a good circle of close friends?
Prime Minister
Yes. Or you ring up and know someone is in difficulty or they have got illness and you are constantly enquiring.
Interviewer
And you do what you can. [end p17]
Prime Minister
… not coming to work today &dubellip; have a day off. You cannot carry on at this pitch. Everyone understands if anyone else has got some difficulty at home, there is someone ill or something unexpected has happened or the water has come through the ceiling everyone understands that.
Interviewer
It is very comforting, isn't it?
Prime Minister
It is. It is just the same in politics. People often say to people who work: “Well, what do you do if the children have an accident or are ill?” Everyone understands that is an emergency and you have to be there. The much more difficult things are when you make tremendous superhuman efforts you can in fact keep things going regularly day by day and you will often find that when the big things happen people rise to the occasion tremendously. It is the little irritations sometimes which take far more of your energy than they should and when we get some tragedies, national tragedies of the kind that we have had recently, or you see someone with a terrible tragedy which is happening, then it puts all your own worries in perspective. I think a lot of life is counting your blessings and recognising when you can do it, just always being there to try to help people who have real problems. [end p18]
Interviewer
How do you cope on a personal level when you go to places such as the scene of the Lockerbie disaster and Clapham, where you see these really dreadful things? How do you cope with that in an emotional sense?
Prime Minister
You cope with it in exactly the same way that all of the emergency services cope with it. You are totally concentrated on what you are there to do, to see what there is, and we are all horrified, but you have got certain things to do, you have got certain things to see, you have got certain people who you must go and see and you must also thank them. We do not say “thank you” enough to people who do a marvellous job. You have such a lot to do in that day and it is exactly the same whether it is nurses, doctors, the emergency services. You will get the enormity of it afterwards. You will get the initial shock first, but because you have so much to do you concentrate on the doing of it.
The most difficult thing of all is on these terrible accidents when the close families have come and are waiting for news and some of them will get very bad news and they will react in exactly the same way as you and I would react if we were the recipients of bad news. They will be, in a way, numb with shock, [end p19] breaking down and yet the full enormity of it not yet come to pass because it is the day by day by day without the person you loved, and we all know they go away for a fortnight now and then or a week now and then, and it is the enormity that someone is not going to walk through the door again and things go back to normal.
They must not bottle it up. It is like a bruise. If a bruise goes on inside, it will not get better and the only thing is to go and be with them, sit with them for a small time and go round to each group. You know that there are no words of comfort because the gap in their heart is there and will be there for ever, but I do feel very strongly that although these people want a short period alone, they should not be left alone. It is better for them to have someone to talk to and I have noticed that eventually they do want to talk. People who have just gone through quite bad things in hospitals, the moment they have got the immediate treatment, they do quite often want to talk about what has happened, but those who are bereaved, those who have lost a son, daughter, wife, a relative, they will say: “Why? Why did it have to happen? Why? Why?” and they cannot see life going on, and yet it does, and it is our job to make it as reasonable as possible and to enable them in the end really, through the kind of friendship and help that we can all give, to come to face not the life they knew but the new life. We each know that death comes to us all; we are not used to coping with it and everyone in the end has to learn how to cope and you just have to try to ease their path. [end p20]
In a national disaster, every time I think we must make certain that they are not short of cash. This is why so often a fund is set up. They have got so much to cope with that they really must not be worried about whether they have got enough money to pay the electricity bill, keep the children going. That is something practical that we can do and I notice that where compensation is due now the organisations that are liable make a point of paying out something quickly.
On our new Social Services system, if you have suddenly had a bereavement a widow will get £1000 paid out very quickly, and so on. These practical things you can do, and I was very pleased. All the voluntary organisations were there helping, the Samaritans were there, the Red Cross were there, the Women's Voluntary Organisation go in and help. But that is the most difficult thing, knowing that they have been waiting there, knowing that some people are dead, some people in hospital, their hopes, and then all of a sudden …
Interviewer
Suddenly there is no hope. [end p21]
Prime Minister
And you cannot always release the names, you see. If you get a terrible accident, fatal casualities cannot tell you who they are. You do not necessarily carry identity. You might be separated from a handbag or wallet, and those who are extremely ill cannot tell you who they are, so it is not easy to find out the information at first and so it is agonising and they have an agonising day.
Interviewer
Listening to you talking now, you are obviously not the Iron Lady you have have been described as being in the past.
Prime Minister
No-one is in life. [end p22]
Interviewer
What hurts you the most? Is it personal criticism, criticism of your policies, or is it pain other people have to suffer?
Prime Minister
Oh, you get misinformation, you get virulent vicious attacks, really vicious, which you just have not to read them, I have learned not to read them.
Interviewer
Because they hurt? [end p23]
Prime Minister
Yes, as they hurt, I learn not to read them and I do not [sic] think you learn if you are hurt by them not to make vicious attacks. You can attack policies without being vicious about it.
Interviewer
Does that hurt you though, you might have a pet policy that you have worked on, you are particularly proud of?
Prime Minister
No, I know that there will be people who think differently. That is different, they have their different views and this is what a Parliament should be, genuine debate, genuine debate, and I know full well that they make vicious attacks or when they make personal attacks, the way we were brought up was if you make personal vicious attacks or if you resort to abuce you have lost the argument and you have no case.
You get more vicious attacks in politics than you get anywhere else.
Interviewer
It is almost as though you are setting yourself up as a target, the &oq;Spitting Image’, for example. [end p24]
Prime Minister
Yes, but you learn that if you put yourself in the front line you will get this sort of attack and the people will do it deliberately to undermine you, deliberately, and you think: “Huh, you are not going to put me off by that!”
Interviewer
Do you watch &oq;Spitting Image’?
Prime Minister
No I do not watch &oq;Spitting Image’. I turned it on once, they had something on I think about the Royal Family and I really did not think that that was a justifiable target so I thought: “Well, I am not going to sit and watch that”.
Interviewer
So you do not sit and watch and laugh possibly at yourself or cringo at yourself?
Prime Minister
No, we watch “Yes Prime Minister” and “Yes Minister”, we have always laughed at that.
Interviewer
You really do like that then? [end p25]
Prime Minister
Love it, absolutely love it. And we watch some of the comedians, they get really marvellous jokes, they really do and they take it out on you but it is not malicious.
Interviewer
It is just funny.
Prime Minister
Yes, it is fun.
Interviewer
So you are quite able to laugh at yourself then?
Prime Minister
Oh Lord yes, thank goodness. “Yes Prime Minister” and “Yes Minister” was really quite outstanding.
Interviewer
Do you watch much television, I should not think you do, do you?
Prime Minister
Very little. We will turn on the News if we are about obviously to see but there is a news tape that you can get all the time, a teletext, you can get the whole time, you have got to know. [end p26]
Do not forget, all news is highly selected, much more selected in television and radio than a newspaper. With a newspaper you have got, heaven knows, twenty, twenty-four pages to read, or far many more in your Sundays. So you will get a much much fuller version, you might get something highly slanted on one page but you will get much more, usually, news on other pages. But television is highly selected, highly selected and the way in which it is put across can be highly varied and you really just want to know what impression is being given to people. Some people are meticulous and present the facts quite clearly and the opinions separately, others muddle them all up together and will present an opinion as if it is a fact when it is not.
So you have got to know the impression that is being given about facts which you know and the impression which is being given can of course alter the way in which people perceive and receive it.
Interviewer
Are you an early morning person, how long does it take you to get ready for work in the mornings or are you a person that leaps out of bed and instantly ready to go or do you drag yourself around? [end p27]
Prime Minister
No, no. When I have made up and got dressed I am dressed for the day, so I have got to take a reasonable amount of time to see that it is all done properly.
Interviewer
Yes. So do you get up early?
Prime Minister
I am usually listening fairly early to one radio programme or another to see what the news is that has come in overnight and these days of course you also get the financial news that has come in from the Far East while you have been asleep or the very late night things closing down in New York which is behind us and ahead of us, so you really want to see if any new issues have come in overnight quickly.
So turning on and listening to quite a number will also give you a quick edition of what the papers say. I do not watch television in the morning, it takes much more of your time to watch television than it does just to listen to the radio and then get up.
Interviewer
Which luxury could you least do without? [end p28]
Prime Minister
I think the most important thing is to have a nice home. I do not mean an extravagant home, I mean a nice home. We do not these days have front parlours or rooms that you sit in, you tend to use your rooms.
Interviewer
You said then “a nice home” rather than a nice house and I think that is the point you are making.
Prime Minister
Yes, a home is what you put in your house as it were. It is the atmosphere. The home is there to be lived in and to be used although I must confess that like most other people, you do have best things, best crockery and a few bits of best things, but that is natural isn't it? Everything else is there to be used, it is not there to look as if you have just had someone in to photograph it and then you go and tidy everything up and put it away. But inevitably it has to be used.
Interviewer
Are you a naturally tidy person? [end p29]
Prime Minister
I have to be and I am quite naturally tidy. My problem is that I do need time, usually some time. I do not get it always at the end of every day but I do try to put some things away, either late at night or early in the morning, otherwise when you go to get them they are not there and I have to have a certain amount of system, order and system, and that is why sometimes it takes a little bit of time in the morning or at night because the things you have worn have got to be put away or made tidy and looked after.
Towards the end of the week I do, in every sense, I have a grand tidy up. You have to because you put things which you have not time to sort out on a desk or in a place and then you have got to go and sort them out. But things are not always tidy because however much we try, but I do have a great tidying up.
But you must have a room, I think everyone has to have a box room or a dumping ground where &dubellip;
Interviewer
Where you can just shut the door on it?
Prime Minister
Yes, it is a necessity to keep the rest tidy, reasonably tidy, not meticulous, but reasonably tidy. [end p30]
Interviewer
What would be, if you could choose and you did not have to worry about security or calls of the affairs of state, what would be you and your husband's ideal holiday?
Prime Minister
Two. First we love to go to the mountains. There is something about mountains, whether it is in winter, we have not ski-ed for years, but you can walk in the mountains which I think if we ever go back to it you know we do the skiing&slash;walking. There is something about mountains, whether it is walking in them in the spring or summer or in the winter, which we love. An ideal holiday is one in which we sometimes go walking in the mountains and then go, for just a few days on the holiday, to hear some really good music concerts or musical shows or operas, that is one.
The other kind of holiday which I have not had time enough to take, but I did visit a nature reserve in Africa where you really do see the animals and it is a marvellous holiday. You have got to respect the animals. Anyone who takes risks is most unwise. I would love to go and have a longer holiday looking at some of these fantastic nature reserves. Really the ideal way is to have a game warden with you to take you round, that is real luxury, but you will see so much more then and you notice when you are round with a Game Warden that they really respect those animals, they know the dangers and they never never never take a risk. [end p31]
Interviewer
And if you were on your ideal holiday, out of sight of everybody, a real get away from it all sort of thing where you did not have to worry about looking your best all the time, what would be the one item of make-up you really would not be able to do without?
Prime Minister
Goodness me, you never think in those terms do you? [end p32]
Interviewer
I think I would grab my lip cream to stop my lips cracking up!
Prime Minister
Ah! That is skin care!
Interviewer
Shall we say toiletries and cosmetics, then?
Prime Minister
You could use water to clean your skin. I have a very very dry skin. I just must have something. You say you go for lip cream. I just would have to have some cream to keep it from drying out too much. [end p33]
Interviewer
You have not got the wrinkles of a dry skin, at least you do not appear to have.
Prime Minister
Oh, I have a very dry skin.
Interviewer
What do you use?
Prime Minister
Something round here, round here, every night. It would be like sandpaper if I did without it. I have a very very dry skin.
Interviewer
So however late it is before you go to bed you do something for your skin?
Prime Minister
Always. However late, your skin must be clean, absolutely clean and you must have something on it. You either use a skin cream or one of the herbal things which is so good for blemishes. I think we are using herbs and the natural things more and more because after all, so many pharmaceuticals are synthetics of what the herbs were and I am very keen on those. You use the natural [end p34] oils or the natural herbs, because the actual natural oils, the plant oils, will actually be absorbed in the skin - they do not sit on top to it. They are absorbed. You have got to get a cream which is a natural oil that is absorbed in the skin and some of the herbs, again, will take the blemishes away or get healing the qualities of the skin.
Basically, the thing which you try to work and which keeps you fit is that you have got to have a reasonable diet - you have got to have the minerals, you have got to have the vitamins in it - and not too heavily overloaded. We all have to have a time when we eat less because you do tend to put on weight at certain times …
Interviewer
Such as Christmas?
Prime Minister
Yes, yes. You just simply have to be careful for a fortnight or three weeks until you have got it off again - and we do. But basically, you try to keep your own systems working. If your nervous system and your bloodstream are working, that will keep everything else going, so that is really what you have to do: to tone up your nervous system and your bloodstream, to keep them [end p35] working, so you must have a reasonable diet and it is the natural oils and herbs that will help to do that, which will keep you in reasonable condition.
I do not believe in taking pharmaceuticals, pills or anything like that. If you keep your natural system toned up, it is very much better.
Interviewer
You said earlier that you are very fit. Do you follow a sort of fitness regime? Do you do exercises?
Prime Minister
No, I do not. As I say, I do watch that one tries to keep one's own systems going and yes, sometimes I would like to do far more walking. That is why I say we like to go to the mountains. There are a few mountains in this country. If we take a holiday in this country. Denis ThatcherDenis goes somewhere where he can play golf, I go somewhere where we can walk along the cliffs or walk and we can perhaps do that in Cornwall or you can also do it in Scotland where you can go lovely walks. Yes, I wish one had time to walk more and take more physical exercise. [end p36]
Interviewer
Do you have a dog?
Prime Minister
No. We would not have time to look after it. If you have animals, they must be properly and well looked after. I am afraid we just do not have time. I would not have one unless we had.
At Chequers, there is a little stray that we took in but there is someone there to look after it. Cats need much less, but they have got to be properly fed and let out.
Interviewer
May I just ask you what frightens you? Spiders, slugs, Question Time?
Prime Minister
Oh, I do not like things like snakes or lizards. What frightens me? You are always nervous at Question Time, always. I have done it for nearly ten years. You are always nervous. I think every Prime Minister is and that is why you take endless time in preparation, but the nervousness lasts until the moment you get up and then you are still nervous, but again, it is like going out to visit an accident scene or to do another job - your whole mind then is concentrated on the question and you tend to forget other things. [end p37]
If I saw a mouse run across the room, I would not like it - it would have to be caught, because it ought not to be around - but the crawly things, the lizards and the snakes I dislike intensely.
Interviewer
Well, you won't find those in the mountains!
Thank you, Prime Minister!
Prime Minister
Thank you.