Tall, stooped, lugubrious Sir George Gardiner, who died last weekend aged 67, was a sometime hard-right British journalist who became MP for Reigate from 1974 to 1997.
He was also, in the last days of Conservative government, the leading conspirator among "Maggie's militants".
He was so vindictive in his onslaughts on Mrs Thatcher's supposed enemies that his local party jettisoned him from his safe seat after his unremitting attacks on prime minister Mr John Major.
The latter was "a ventriloquist's dummy" in Gardiner's bitter words, who had failed to fill Mrs Thatcher's boots.
Mr Major, in his memoirs, reciprocated. He described Gardiner as a "viper slithering around in the parliamentary pit".
Despite Gardiner's over-eager defence of his idol, Mrs Thatcher never offered any government post to her first biographer. His book, Margaret Thatcher: From Childhood To Leadership, was published in 1975.
He was equally mistrusted by even his Tory journalistic colleagues for his sin of secretly working for Conservative central office while functioning as a lobby correspondent for Thomson Regional newspapers and others. He was chief political correspondent for Thomson from 1964 to 1974.
Except for his deviant support of the European Union, Gardiner was a classic right-winger. He favoured the death penalty and tight controls on spending and opposed immigration. His support for playing rugby and cricket with the apartheid South Africans earned him the tag of "Botha boy" from Labour's Mr Paul Boateng.
His skill lay in deploying populist rightwing journalism on behalf of Britain's dispossessed suburbanites. He also tried to bridge the gap between the Tories' old imperial right and the newer prejudices of the lower middle classes, which he reached through his trenchant articles in the Sunday Express.
His conspiratorial organising abilities were most successful in the 1974-75 campaign to install Mrs Thatcher as Conservative leader in place of Mr Edward Heath.
He later completely overplayed his hand, after Mr Major had replaced her in 1990, by leading a delegation to the prime minister from that right-wing cabal, the 92 Committee, in 1994 to demand that Mr Major reshuffle his cabinet to the right. Major sent them packing in a few minutes with "fleas in their ears".
He had started with the Young Conservatives at 15, and his rejection on the eve of the 1997 election by the Reigate Conservatives, for his continuing viciousness towards Mr Major, shocked him. So he fought the seat for Sir James Goldsmith's Referendum Party, later returning to the Conservatives.
It was a sad ending for an Essex lad who went from Harvey Grammar School in Folkestone, to chalk up a first in philosophy, politics and economics at Balliol College, Oxford, where he was also secretary of the Oxford Conservative Association.
He undoubtedly displayed journalistic skills, but his funereal, hangdog look and conspiratorial manner soon earned him the title of "Angel of Death".
When Mrs Thatcher was at her peak, he managed to win election to the executive of the backbenchers' 1922 Committee and became chairman of the 92 Committee. But once she fell, his days were numbered, not least because her successor, Mr Major, failed to prove himself the "son of Thatcher" that true believers initially believed him to be.
He leaves his second wife, Helen, and two sons and a daughter by his first wife, Juliet.
Sir George Arthur Gardiner: born March 3rd, 1935; died November 16th, 2002