Baroness Thatcher last night didn't say she was giving up her public speaking engagements, but spokespeople said it for her. Doctors have advised her that inflicting years of hardship on others has finally come full circle and everyone's really had enough of her now, anyway.

The Baroness's last speaking engagement was at a dinner in support of former US president Ronald Reagan, where she received a thunderous standing ovation from 700 Republicans who never had to live under her regime.

Former henchman Lord Tebbit, similarly ennobled in a period when being powerful was confused with being respectable, was full of praise for his former dominatrix. "Even though she will no longer be speaking publicly her legacy will live on," he said. "It will be a very long time before ordinary people recover from her reign of greed, poverty, unemployment and state-sponsored police brutality."