And the vegetables?

Poms are delighted the Euro's in trouble ... A rumpled Lord Chancellor gets stuck into legal aid and prisons ... Kenneth Clarke says there's no direct connection between an increased prison population and falling crime rates ... Not bad for a Tory ... Leverhulme files from Blighty

It was on a small coach just outside Salzburg that the burly, bearded driver named Fritz, who had been listening to the radio, turned to us and said in portentous tones: "Maggie Satcher has resigned."

As in Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play: that was 20 years ago today.

Maggie is now old and fading quietly away but her acolytes have been putting their pouting lips to the clarion.

Charles "Lord Snooty" Moore, who as her official biographer is waiting patiently to write the last page, penned a thoughtful piece on how we were now surveying the ruins of Greece, Ireland and Portugal.

He praised the Iron Lady for keeping Britain out of the Euro.

Andrew Roberts, the eminent historian, gushed a tad. He took flowers to Downing Street on Defenestration Day and sobbed as he handed them to the policeman. The beastly socialists were singing, "Ding Dong. The witch is dead".

Thatcher: saved the poundSaid one to Roberts, "Bad day for you mate?" The crowd laughed derisively.

Thankfully Roberts had the presence of mind to respond with a riposte that only a young Tory could muster.

"Yes but a bad eleven-and-a-half years for you!"

It doesn't quite roll off the tongue, does it?

The extraordinary thing in hindsight is that an Austrian bus driver should have cared.

*   *   *

As Ireland stretches a horny, pleading hand from the toilet bowl, there is a general view in the British press of, "Phew! Glad we didn't ditch the pound."

There are also grave predictions of the imminent demise of the single currency.

But then Britain has just come out beneath Iceland and Eire on the Legatum Institute's Prosperity Index. Several European countries are in the top ten.

One big political beast remains unaffected by those saying, "I told you so".

Kenneth Harry Clarke, sometime Health Secretary, Employment Secretary, Education Secretary, Home Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer, has more experience of high office than probably any serving politician in the world.

He has always been in favour of close ties with Europe.

In his autobiography, John Major said:

"Ken believed that the single currency would come into being, and that Britain should be part of it. I feared it would come too, and felt we might, one day, have to accept that it was in our national interest. Ken was enthusiastic. I was not."

Major was cautious, because when Maggie cried, "No! No! No!" they chopped off her head.

Under provocation, Major said Clarke could be wilful:

"If his beliefs were biffed on the nose, he would biff back." (Autobiography by John Major, Harper Collins 1992.)

Thatcher described Clarke in her memoirs as an energetic and persuasive bruiser, very useful in a brawl or an election.

Clarke was one of the first members of her Cabinet with the cojones to tell her to resign. He thought she would be humiliated in the second round. When Clarke went to see her she said:

"His manner was robust in the brutalist style he has cultivated: the candid friend." (The Downing Street Years by Margaret Thatcher, Harper Collins 1993.)

She called the whole business, "Treachery with a smile on its face".

Clarke ran for the leadership three times. Thatcher campaigned against Clarke twice: first for William Hague and then for Ian Duncan Smith. She wrote to The Daily Telegraph in June 2001:

"I fail to understand how Ken could lead today's Conservative party to anything other than disaster... He seems to view with blithe unconcern the erosion of Britain's sovereignty in Europe." (Maggie by John Sergeant, Macmillan 2005.)

Tony Blair's view of Clarke was much more revealing.

"I like Ken; he's a proper stand-up guy. The Tories were foolish never to make him leader, though I was very grateful for that." (A Journey by Tony Blair, Hutchinson 2010.)

*   *   *

Lord Chancellor: cojonesClarke affects a certain style which would go over well in Australia. He wears crumpled suits, Hush Puppies and loves jazz, cigars and real ale.

He can often be seen queuing at the checkout at Sainsbury's in Nottingham or sitting in the stands at Trent Bridge.

As Chancellor of the Exchequer, Clarke liked to sip a glass of whisky as he delivered budget announcements on dutiable spirits.

On the day after the Tories were bundled from office in 1997, a hired furniture truck was seen leaving Number 11. To the astonishment of the crowd, it was being driven by the former chancellor.

*   *   *

He is now serving as Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary.

On taking up his appointment he eschewed a pretty generous pension estimated at £2.3 million.

As the person responsible for the legal profession, Clarke is busy pulling the emergency cord on a few gravy trains.

He described the Sunday Bloody Sunday Inquiry as a disaster.

This week he slashed legal aid for civil cases. Amid shouts of horror from the lawyers he said:

"It cannot be right, that the taxpayer is footing the bill for unnecessary court cases which would never have even reached the courtroom door, were it not for the fact that somebody else was paying."

In 1993 Clarke's successor as Home Secretary, Michael Howard, said notoriously that prison worked. He built more prisons.

Seventeen years on the prison population in Britain has soared by 85 percent.

The Lord Chancellor addressed the judges recently. "Prison doesn't necessarily work that well," was the message:

"There is and never has been, in my opinion, any direct correlation between spiralling growth in the prison population and a fall in crime. Crime fell throughout most of the western world in the 1990s. Crime fell in countries that had, and still have, far lower rates of imprisonment than ours.

Crime has fallen in Britain throughout a period of both rising prison populations and throughout the same period of economic growth, with strong employment levels and rising living standards."

*   *   *

John Major always saw Clarke as his successor, and the current Prime Minister rates Kenneth Clarke very highly.

It is astounding that when Clarke was first elected to the House of Commons in 1970, David Cameron was four years old.

Apparently, Dave has a lot of smart, pushy women on his staff. They throw their weight around but it doesn't faze the old boy.

He was interrupted during a meeting a few days ago by an official barging into the room to tell him: "Number 10 is on the phone."

Clarke looked him up and down before pronouncing:

"If it's the Prime Minister, tell him I'll ring him back. If it's anyone else, tell them to f*** off."

*   *   *

In the famous Spitting Image sketch, Maggie was dining with her Cabinet. When she gave her order to the waiter he inquired, "And the vegetables?"

"They'll have the same," she said.

In more ways than one the 70 year-old Lord Chancellor has always been a swede.