BRITAIN: Edwina Currie - in addition to her revelations about John Major - has some acerbic comments to make about her political colleagues, friend and foe, in her diaries, which are published today. Here are her views on some of the celebrated people who crossed her path during her political career:
Margaret Thatcher (1990): If that lady is not on HRT, I'm a monkey's uncle. She is round and soft and sexy, very female indeed. . . She points a lot, and when she talks the . . . skin on her neck goes pink and blows out a bit. I kept thinking of a turkey which does the same when showing off.
Jeffrey Archer: Colleagues who remembered him from 1969 to 1973 recall . . . He was regarded as impossibly rude and indiscreet. I've no intention of ending up like him. If I can't make a go of it, I'll find something else to do, and so should he . . . I wouldn't trust him with last week's laundry list.
Norman Fowler, a former employment secretary: A man of cliques, sucked people dry and then discarded them.
Tony Newton, former leader of the Commons: A sad case . . . disorganised and poor at taking decisions.
Kenneth Clarke: We fell out for a lot of unspoken reasons, he and I, but his insensitivity to other people, his total lack of recognition for how things change, rules him out as a future leader as far as I am concerned.
Douglas Hurd, former foreign secretary: So boring . . . Always reacted to my activities like there's a bad smell under his nose.
Gerald Kaufman (former labour minister): Such a slimy bastard . . . He's a man I really wouldn't trust anywhere, yet the profiles paint him as a nice man underneath. Could have fooled me.
Norman Lamont, the former chancellor: I don't like him. Not a nice man . . . Every time Norman Lamont is on, which is of course an automatic consequence of talking about the economy, he's looked like a real prat . . . Looking more like a Cheshire cat than ever - his human features disappearing under the cream of his self-satisfaction. An unpleasant and untalented person.
Nigel Lawson, former chancellor: Arrogant, brilliant and thoughtless.
Michael Portillo, failed Tory leadership challenger, since left politics: Will go far. Really able, thoughtful and neither left nor (I suspect) right wing.
Ann Winterton (Tory MP with whom Edwina fell out): Spiteful bitch.
Edwina Currie, Diaries 1987-1992, published today by Little, Brown at £18.99 sterling