When Margaret Thatcher got locked in a toilet!

Monday, 31 December , 2007, 08:33

London: Margaret Thatcher’s visit to the United States as leader of Britain's main opposition Conservative Party in September 1977 took a comic turn when she got locked in a toilet of a Texan hotel.

Thatcher’s American experiences were revealed in documents in the UK govt archives, which were made public on December 27.

Thatcher’s husband Denis also suffered the embarrassment of being trapped in the loo, thanks to a door handle that did not work.

The start of the visit was marred by the failure of the hotel to provide either a hairdresser or someone to press Thatcher's dress, because of which her secretary did her washing at the home of British Consul General Roy Fox.

Fox, an official at the British consulate-general in Houston said that the then leader of the opposition, treated her Fawlty Towers-style stay in Houston, Texas ‘as a joke’, reports the Mirror.

Thatcher also wrestled with the microphone from the host of one event so that she could speak and snub a journalist from television network CBS.

The documents were released at the National Archives in Kew, west London, under laws, which allow top-secret official papers to be made public after 30 years.