By Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmith@gmail.com or martinantonsmith@gmail.com
NOTE: THIS WAS GREATLY UPDATED ON 22 AUG 2026 – 1500 words were added.
“That’s another fine mess I’ve got myself into”.
Said the man who was almost next to me in the train to Nowheresville. Of course he was talking to himself – something that used to be rare in the England transport system. It was well past midnight on a Friday night. Of course drunkeness on the tube in London was the norm as people left the central drinking holes of London. He didn’t know who I was at this point – this would come a lot later on, long after his retirement from UK Politics. I would know all about him from afar thanks to my hidden recording devices. For some forty years he did not know I had existed at all. I knew everything, and I was lucky that he had a habit of murmerring away to himself as he sat at home after a hard days work.
My name was Anton Schmid and when I first saw the at-the–time thirty-three-year-old Thatcher backbencher Terrence Tipthorne – and his wild performance on the tube – I was just a twenty seven year old greenhorn. I was just a lowly telecoms technician working for British Telecom. Although I had bigger brains than my job. With my big bored brains I had used BT equipment to make the best ‘bugs’ possible – not of the crawling type – of the surveillence type. I made both listening bugs and video recording bugs. Better that state of the art – my bugs were only one cm square. I would have some great entertainment snooping on Tipthorne the man who replaced Thatcher. Yes – initially I was just having fun – although now looking back I was also working on a long term plan to save the UK from the UK that Tipthorne ended up creating during his two decade long run as PM.
This would be how I got to know about the real Terrence Tipthorn and how dark his personality could become. But for now I was just watching him from a few seats down on the tube. I was watching this drunk who I did not yet know was a Thatcher backbencher. I had simply though he was just another mid eighties yuppie. I thought he was perhaps a stockbroker from Canary Wharf or perhaps one of the millions of faceless corporates in ill fitting black suits. Terrence had gotten up and was swaying wildly while holding the hand rail above his fold out seat and started slurring loudly.
“If only I had listened to my other self before I did it”. Said the man in a loud yelp above the din of the other half-cut passengers – who later I’d soon learn from a TV news report was Terrence Tipthorn. I noticed as he pretended to read the strangely creased paper he was now frantically scratching himself. It was like he had an ant under his shirt. He also had a wild look in his eyes. Yes his clothes quite Businessman-like but his dapper-ness was ruined as he had a large patch of post-London-nightlife-alcohol-binge vomit on his shirt. The smell was mostly obscured by the ubiquitous cigarette smoke that literally hung in the air in visible layers. They were different times compared to now, that is nineteen eighty five versus twenty thirty seven.
Tipthorne’s haircut was recent and sharp. He was almost handsome but not quite, on account of his weak chin, bad English teeth and slightly wonky and ovesize nose. But he certainly wasn’t ugly and for an English Politician he was relatively good looking. He helped himself by being not so far away from what is called ‘snappy dresser’. His shoes of top quality were by the well known firm ‘Balderdashes’. Baldedashes Shoes had been to footwear of choice among the upper-classes for some three hundred years. It was highly unusual if the man in Ten Downing street did not wear them. Of course his ties were rather garish, often having little planes on them or strange patterns. In short he wanted to always look the part more than he could make happen in the real world. Well he was a Tory wasn’t he?
I noticed was the Financial Times open on his lap. The headline was
“Thatcher Cuts Red Tape – Invites More Foreign Investment”
Yes to look at him you would not know he was volatile at all. Just a typical suit who was binge drinking – like most of the Western world did after work in big cities, let alone London. But when he opened his mouth – it was all beyond doubt. He loaded up the next line by taking a big audible breath.
“It all started with Thatcher – IT’S ALL HER FAULT WE RICH GUYS WERE MUCH MORE LOVED BEFORE HER!”
He screamed as he stood up off his seat. Of course no one knew he was a Tory backbencher so it didn’t mean anything controversial. Even if someone did recognize him it didn’t matter a jott – backbenchers were seen as silly children no one took them seriously. They had to rise up a number of places to be noticed by anyone.
He was told to sit down by a few passengers. He of course did not sit down. He said the next line.
“Don’t let that grocers child pull the wool over yer eyes folks….she was and is scammer, a charlatan and shyster…and I loved her”. It was then he was semi-pelted with a few jeers and a couple of empty coffee cups, and a few scrunched up pages of The Telegraph or one of the many ‘daylies’ of the time. Back then before smartphones their were newspapers everywhere within arms reach – especially on trains and busses.
“I loved her fiery red hair just as much as her sternly and poorly veiled pomposity…maybe even more! Naaah…just kidding! Or am I aha-haha!”
People yelled a little louder with their jeers, and some more things flew. This time a few more empty coffee cups flew and some more balls of scrunched up newspaper broadsheets. Everyone else on the train was almost as drunk as this man – Terrence Tipthorne, so the tongues were firing up – so to speak.
‘Sit down you fazed cookie’. The crowd around her laughed – includign a chuckle from me. The lady that had given terrence this quip-shutdown was a sixty year old Scottish accented lady. She was loaded in cardigan and loaded with clothes shopping bags. Back then sixty was quite old. Sometimes lonely older people living on their own went shopping late at night in London.Another spoke up against Terrence’s on the face of it ‘pro-Thatcher’ words.
‘That red haired witch! She smashed he bloody unions to dust you dolt’ – don’t you remember the miners strike for fucks sake?” said the man in oily overalls who was holding a spanner at both ends. He was actually one of those on call mechanics that sometimes had to use the tube late after they had fixed another train that had broken down.
‘She believed in clueless trickle-down economics’ said the drunken London School Of Economics university student who I noticed had a Text book half falling out of her haversack. It was on the famous mid nineteenth century English PM during the Victorian era ‘Pitt the Elder and his Economic Views Of England’ by Brian Ware. I thought that was funny – ‘B. Ware’.
“OH I WISH I WAS THATCHER’S HUSBAND! BUT DENNIS THE SOZZLED GIN GOLF BOY AND HENPECKED FOOL BEAT ME TOO IT….AH HAHAHAR” Terrence spluttered out ridiculously. There was a loud groan from the passengers and again a few projectiles here and there including a mans cap. The young socially invisible backbencher Tipthorne continued his drunken verbal antics as he swayed standing of his seat and clutching the hand rail for balance.
“SURE THE SEX WOULD BE BAD BAD BAD!!!! BUT THINK OF THE FRINGE BENEFITS!!!”. This line drew some sniggers, and a few guffaws and I watched the peoples faces turn upward – he had definitely just improved his reception more than a little. People in a big dirty mega city like London love an unexpected laugh. The English are not entirely mean or unsmiling or as stuffy as is commenly thought abroad. Nothing was thrown at Tipthorne this time – other than a rogue pencil that amazingly landed in his spiffy jacket pocket next to the fancy blue handkerchief. Tipthorne seeing this improvement from the captive audience was boyed to keep going. This time as he was getting a little tired from all the excitement he was alternatively loud and then quiet.
“If I was THATCHER’S HUSBAND….. I’d take her on long holidays in the COTTSWOLDS – because Politics is a STRESSFULL GAME!!!!”.
The sniggers turned into big guffaws and claps and cetainly no projectiles. People whispered to each other along the lines of ‘maybe we’ve misjudged the fellow’ and ‘haha this suited up git’s funny’ etc. Again he kept talking.
“I would have said to her ‘HEY THATCHER – don’t offshore that, don’t BORROW from those SHADY SAUDIS YA GINGER BITCH! We can pay OUR OWN BILLS with the pure traditional hard workin’ class factory-spun-labouring known as BRIIIITISH GRITTT”.
The train was now clapping to him and listening with quiet respect. usually someone in a suit was a snob who was down on the working class. Of course most on the train were lower or middle classes, but most would have had working class parents. Of course Tipthorne – as I had found out later from my recordings of his late night whisky addled mumblings – had one working class parent and one of lower middle class and had grown up in the East End; but they were the kind that had pretended they were ‘rich’ to anyone who didn’t know them. Tipthorne had always found this embarrassing. That’s why it was a common ‘late night mumble’ of his that my listening devices – bugs – had picked up. He continued the rant as the train clacked along and as his audience listened now with quiet interest.
“I would have said HEY YOU THATCHER – I really loved your alliance with RONNIE REAGAN – after all a B – GRADE ACTOR is exactly the steel trapped mind we needed to HITCH OUR SPOTTY ENGLISH ARSE TOO” Of course he was almost certainly being sarcastic, and they all mostly picked up on it. They loved it. They were putty in his hands – although he was too drunk to see the effect.
They were all so moved a throng of the tube passengers started to sing what turned out to be a messy but ebullient combination of they old-timey songs ‘for he’s a jolly good fellow’ and ‘hip hip hooray’. Now egged on by these simple folk he again took a mighty big gasp to load up the next verbal quickfire rounds. He knew he was on a roll.
“Now did I ever TELL YOU GUYS about the brilliant PR MAN friend of THATCHER’S by the name of Joseph GOEBBELS?”.
But he had ruined it. The train went silent. Half drunk people in nineteen eighty five didn’t really want to remember the Nazi’s as it reminded too many of them of ‘The Blitz’ that is the bombing of London. In fact it wa only twenty five years since the last of the rubble had been cleared from ‘The Blitz’.
Tipthorne had lost Though nothing was thrown. I saw the drawn faces of the older folk. Bit no stray paper cups and no scrunched up newspapers were thrown. Though there was just a barely audible gasp of disappointment from the forty-five pluses. Of course the Englanders on this train were now used to having their high hopes dashed in a seconds notice. They mostly accepted it with stiff upper lips. I mean by this time dissappointment was the norm.
The last decade – starting with the ‘oil shocks’ of the mid seventies had been very bad times for England – and they weren’t that good before that, even though England had been on the side that had won the war. Terrence Tipthorne’s impromptu comedy act had was simply a silly diversion anyway – they were happy for it while it had lasted. Now they simply went back to amusing themselves by the usual thoughts about the dull but necessary tasks they all had to do with the usual Saturday morning chores – dishes, vacuuming, doing the washing etc.
The spiffy dressed ‘Thatcher half-loving-half-hating man’ looked around, and had seen and accepted that his last line had not landed with his captive-on-the-train audience. Later on in his Political memoirs he would reference this laughably embarrassing happening when he was simply a promising backbencher. But being a Politician, of course in the memoir he wrote he would disguise it by pretending he was watching it all from afar in the train as an onlooker – instead of the truth that he was the main event speaker making a fool of himself.
Of course he never forgot the deeply embarrassing incident – but he wrote it off to a ‘temporary mental meltdown’ which afflicted many of the young-ish career minded ladder climbers of his type.
As he now many decades later sat in his country home as a man of eighty with his pipe and The Telegraph on his lap he was still happy to delude himself about hi political life and legacy. He told himself how glad he was that he had ‘made a difference in UK Politics’. In his time as PM he had indeed copied Thatcherism down to the last thread of its threadbare ideology. Sure this had meant a terrible social decline during his reign – that is beyond dispute even among the current Tory remnant.
During his time at Number Ten the poor had all became homeless, the middleclass decimated into abject poverty and were now living in squalid camping grounds as long term tenants. However the top half of the upperclasses – such as our man Terrence Tipthorn himself – had greatly prospered out of the carnage of what had been dryly and emotionlessly referred to as a ‘K shaped economy’ by the wealthy economists of the day. He took a sip of hi neat whisky.
“I was only doing the right thing by way of Thatcherism” he said to himself trying to squash the nagging feeling that was omnipresent.
“It was the execution of Thatcherism by the boneheads in my cabinet that ruined Britain for the millions of dispossessed stupid but honorable middle and working-class ‘brokies’ – it certainly wasn’t my fantastic adroit leadership”. Again trying to squash that nagging feeling of ‘being a traitor to his people’ that would pop into his mind a few times per hour.
At about this point he realized the drink had been drunk. When he had these intrusive thoughts his sips turned to gulps. He would then get up to his liquor cabinet as the mental stress of these invasive thoughts further ramped up.
As he did every night, he would drink until he passed out on his comfortable chair and then always wake up at eleven am sharp. After all there was no one else to wake him anyway. His wife had died a decade ago and no one had suspected a thing – but of course I had my recordings didn’t I?.
TO BE CONTINUED.
Anton Martin Smith Writer 