Thatcher's US bathroom farce revealed in new documents

0 Comments | AFP, December, 2007

LONDON (AFP) — As British premier, Margaret Thatcher may have forged a strong "special relationship" with the US, but an early visit did not always offer a warm introduction to the nation, documents released Friday show.

Thatcher went to the United States as leader of Britain's main opposition Conservative Party in September 1977 but the visit took a comic turn when she got locked in a toilet and "had to be released from bondage" at a Texan hotel.

She also displayed signs of what became her trademark strong-mindedness, "wrestling" the microphone from the host of one event so that she could speak and snubbing a journalist from television network CBS.

Roy Fox, an official at the British consulate-general in Houston, wrote to a colleague at the British embassy...