Thatcher went on egg diet: Reports

The diet aimed to help Thatcher, who weighed about nine-and-a-half stone, lose nine kilogram in two weeks and also featured large quantities of spinach, coffee, steak, lamb and fish. A further instruction ordered her only to drink whisky — her favourite tipple — on days when she ate meat.

A yellowing note detailing the diet was found inside her personal diary for 1979 and has been released to the public along with thousands more of her personal papers by the Margaret Thatcher Foundation.

“It has to be pre-election,” said Chris Collins of the foundation. “I think she was looking to get in in trim for the cameras. “She probably thought: ‘The cameras are going to be on me the whole time — I’m going to lose some weight’.

“But she is not somebody who had a problem with weight at all. She is on the move the whole time — she burns  energy.”