Tory fibs and whoppers

WHAT is it about Tory Ministers and the truth? From beyond the grave, a wretchedly unchivalrous claim by Mrs Thatcher’s Defence Minister Alan Clark has deeply distressed Dame Joan Collins.

In the memoirs of veteran TV documentary-maker Michael Cockerell, serialised in The Mail on Sunday, the prolific adulterer is reported to have boasted that he’d once slept with the actress. An indignant Dame Joan says it’s a shameful lie.

We’re sorry if we managed to upset her.

Not only did she never meet Clark, who died in 1999, but she had to Google his name to establish who he was. She would have then discovered that Clark had a complex relationship with the truth – having admitted to being ‘economical with the actualité’ during a court case in 1982 when he lied to cover up the Government’s approval of exports of bomb-making equipment to Saddam Hussein. Proof that Mrs T’s pet mischiefmaker even got a kick out of confessing to be a liar.