Margaret Thatcher styled her hair 120 times in a single year: Secret files reveal all

New Delhi: In the turbulent Seventies, the then Jana Sangh leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee told the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in the Lok Sabha: "Ma'am, you can fix your hair in five minutes, how can you fix the RSS in five minutes?", and the entire House burst into laughter. Indira Gandhi had said she could fix the RSS within 5 minutes.Over to Margaret Thatcher. Though Thatcher's early life as a grocer's daughter was a far cry from the sometimes lavish surroundings she later found herself as Britain's first female prime minister. She was as well known for her immaculately coiffed hair, sharp suits and handbags as she was for her politics. Now, previously unseen documents reveal just how far Margaret Thatcher went to maintain her image. An analysis of her appointments diary, released by the National Archives, shows that she had her hair styled 120 times in 1984, an average of once every three days.1. Thatcher's hairdo was high-maintenance Margaret Thatcher's immaculate hairdo took intensive efforts to perfect, with the late British prime minister having her bouffant reworked every three days on average. Her appointments diary for 1984, showed she had 118 hair appointments in the year. Around the G7 summit in London in June 1984, she had her hair done on five consecutive days. 2. Phoney Thatcher-Reagan tape spooked British spies A fake tape of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher arguing over the Falklands War had the British secret services scrambling to identify the culprits. The tape, supposedly a telephone recording of then US president Reagan and the British prime minister, was anonymously sent to several Dutch newspapers during the 1983 UK general election. In the faked exchange about the 1982 Falklands War between Britain and Argentina, Reagan urged restraint while Thatcher wanted Buenos Aires punished as quickly as possible. 3. Thatcher believed public would back chemical weapons Margaret Thatcher believed public opinion would back the build-up of a western chemical weapons programme to counter the Soviet threat. An official note of Thatcher's meeting with Jeane Kirkpatrick, then US ambassador to the UN, outlines her concern that the west had no adequate response to the impressive Soviet capability in the field of chemical weapons and that use of these weapons by the Russians might therefore force us at once to nuclear retaliation. The comments came less than a month after the UN had confirmed the use of chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq war and as western allies scrambled to introduce export controls on chemicals which could be used to make agents such as mustard gas. 4. Curious incident of the dog and the French embassy It was a diplomatic incident so bizarre it became an episode in the television sitcom Yes, Prime Minister — but the British cabinet was not laughing at the time. Newly declassified cabinet minutes reveal the government's astonishment that a French security officer, in London for the state visit of President Francois Mitterrand, had placed two containers of explosives inside the grounds of the French embassy, apparently to test the efficiency of the British security services. When discovered and questioned by the police, the operative was found to have additional explosives on him, which were seized. The man had apparently avoided airport security checks by revealing he was an intelligence officer. 5. Thatcher received warning about CIA's activities in UK Margaret Thatcher was warned that the CIA did not always give sufficient advance notice when it carried out operations in Britain. Paddy Ashdown, a Liberal MP, complained to Thatcher about the US intelligence organisation's activities in the UK in November 1984. Ashdown was worried about clandestine approaches made by US agents to British computer firms in this country and abroad to prevent eastern bloc countries obtaining western computer secrets by stealth. 6. Thatcher refused to call for Mandela release Margaret Thatcher refused to call publicly for Nelson Mandela's release from prison during her first official meeting with PW Botha, the former South African prime minister, in 1984. Government minutes showed the former UK prime minister only raised concerns about Mandela's detention in a private meeting with Botha — and they were quickly brushed aside. Thatcher's decision to tip-toe around the subject will reignite Labour claims that the Conservatives indulged the apartheid regime in the 1980s and did little to assist Mandela, who died last month.