"Back to Jill's diary and her comments on Michael's sartorial difficulties: "Jennie Lee used to say, 'Don't let the Tories dress Michael.'" He got a big kick out of that. She also mentions meeting Denis Thatcher and finding him "deadly and quite cheerless." "He was, too," Michael agreed. Jill used to imitate him, Michael told me: We went to Downing Street twice when she [Thatcher] was there. In Private Eye they have him [Denis] calling for a "tincture" when he called for his drink. When he came up [for a drink], I said, "Just a tincture, please."