NEVER mind the initiation rite whereby David Cameron allegedly placed a private part of his anatomy in a dead pig’s head, at least according to the Lord Ashcroft biography. This is really serious. Mrs Thatcher once said something I can agree with. This is just about the most upsetting news imaginable to an old leftie Thatcher basher.

Early on in my newspaper column days, I took to using the nickname Mrs Hacksaw whenever Thatcher was mentioned. Infantile perhaps, but it cheered me up.

Yesterday the Daily Mail continued its serialisation of Lord Ashcroft’s Tory-kicks-a-Tory book. And it turns out that Mrs Thatcher thought David Cameron was shallow – shallower than a pool of spilt Pimms. Well, the image is mine, not Mrs Thatcher’s, although she might have shared the sentiment. What she said, according to the book, is summed up as follows:

“Thatcher’s friends confirm that she never did warm to David Cameron.

‘She thought he was shallow, really. She’d say: “If you’re leader, you’ve got to believe in something,” ’ says one of her former confidants.”

Well he is shallow and Thatcher was right about that. That sound you can hear is teeth being gritted.

A photograph from Thatcher’s later days shows her standing at the door to Number Ten with her replacement as Tory prime minister. As a courtesy Cameron has just shown her round her old lodgings. She is holding onto a rail by the steps, looking frail and bad-tempered, and Cameron, looking hail and fleshy, is pointing away from the door, as if showing the way out. The subtext is: “This is all mine now and you can shove off for a start.”

The other Thatcher snippet revealed yesterday was her disdain for Cameron’s first manifesto. You may recall that this ludicrous pamphlet took the form of an ‘Invitation to join the Government of Britain.’

On being shown a copy, Mrs Thatcher is said to have spluttered: ‘What is this? What is this? People don’t want to join the Government of Britain. They want to elect the Government of Britain, for it to govern!’

The batty baroness was right about that too. It was a ludicrous gimmick, although it did the trick. But I like the notion of Mrs Thatcher being made to splutter. There is a fitting circularity to this, as she made plenty of people splutter in her time.

Anyway, fie on politics for now. It would be a shame to let the day pass without mentioning that personal billboard poster by the roadside in Sheffield. A woman paid for the giant sign as an act of revenge on her cheating husband.

It read: “To my cheating husband Paul. You deserve each other. When you get home I won’t be there. Enjoy your drive to work! Lisa.”

The sign was placed next to the Sheffield Parkway, a busy dual carriageway which runs from the M1 into the city. The avenging wife is said to have paid hundreds of pounds for the advert to be displayed yesterday morning between 6am and 9pm.

The poster surfed onto social media and was discussed on yesterday’s Loose Women, according to the Sheffield Star website. So that spurned woman seems to have got value from her investment.