Gordon Brown has got out of the excruciating experience of having Mrs Thatcher to dinner at Chequers, by telling the ageing former Tory PM that she’s already been to dinner several times this year, but she must have forgotten about it.

With civil servants frantically waving ‘No!’ and ‘Stop it!’ the Prime Minister spoke to his predecessor on the phone saying, ‘No you were definitely here last week. Don’t you remember?’ Mrs Thatcher’s office later put out a press release saying how much Mrs Thatcher had enjoyed her return visit to the country home of the Prime Minister, and that they had discussed a range of domestic and international issues. Journalists enquired what she thought of the new decor at her former home, but a spokesman for her office said they would have to get back to them.

Since Carol Thatcher revealed that her mother’s mind was starting to go, a number of former enemies of the Iron Lady have been in touch. Arthur Scargill wrote to her to thank her for her generous recent donation to the National Union of Mineworkers, while General Juan Perez of Argentina thanked her for her recent public pronouncement stating that she thought it was time to return the Malvinas to Argentina.

‘She’s lost any sense of reality’ said Gordon Brown. ‘I hope I’m not like that after I’ve been Prime Minister for eleven years.’