Britain: Former British sports minister Tony Banks has died in Florida after suffering a stroke, a family friend said last night.
The 62-year-old former Labour MP, who became Lord Stratford when he accepted a peerage last year, was being taken to a hospice when he died.
Mr Banks was a larger than life figure who rarely failed to speak his mind. Parliamentary colleagues on all sides regarded him fondly despite his sharp tongue. His ready wit also made him a popular guest on radio and television programmes.
But sometimes his bluntness caused controversy - such as when he described William Hague as a "foetus". He also came under fire after referring to fellow MP Terry Dicks as a "pig's bladder on a stick", and once called the portly Nicholas Soames a "one-man food mountain". Margaret Thatcher, he said, had "the sensitivity of a sex-starved boa-constrictor".
An animal lover, he once tabled a motion in the Commons condemning human beings as "obscene, perverted, cruel, uncivilised and lethal" and looking forward to "the day when the inevitable asteroid slams into the Earth and wipes them out, thus giving nature the opportunity to start again".
He also frequently spoke against the government on Iraq and Afghanistan, but this did not prevent him being given a peerage when he stepped down from the Commons. - (PA)