A close friend of Margaret Thatcher today brought warm laughter to the Commons with a string of anecdotes about the late prime minister.
Conor Burns, who visited Baroness Thatcher at her home almost every Sunday evening, said he had treasured his time with her and that Monday's news of her death had been dreaded by all those closest to her.
Mr Burns recounted stories of how he and Lady Thatcher would go through the papers, recounting an occasion when she had told him Prime Minister David Cameron should properly be even further behind in the polls two years from an election.
And sparking laughs around the Commons, Mr Burns recounted how Lady Thatcher agreed with a taxi driver's assessment that "we haven't had a good'un since".
Turning to Baroness Thatcher's legacy, the Bournemouth West MP said: "Much has been made in the media of the controversial nature of Margaret Thatcher as a politician and of her premiership.
"We should not shy away from that today and nor should we on these benches be afraid to talk about that. That would be to betray who she was.
"She was a robust, principled, confrontational character.
"She wasn't, if I may say to the Deputy Prime Minister, a Tory at all - she proudly stated she was a laissez-faire, Gladstonian liberal, in the proudest traditions of the Gladstonian Liberal Party. She would have welcomed that."
Mr Burns said the sight of protests and parties which have met her death in some quarters would not have fazed her.
He said they were in fact the "greatest compliment" to her record.
He told MPs: "She would take great pride in these protests. She wouldn't get angry about them, she would regard them as utterly and completely absurd.
"All I would say to those in them, look at how gracious she was in always what she when her political foes departed the scene - mostly recently in the statement she issued about Michael Foot.
"Her enduring legacy is not just in what she achieved and the fact the Labour Party have not reversed much of it.
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"While she was divisive to some degree, controversial certainly, she was an inspiration to many people way beyond these shores."
