[varmint]

SIMON: Why did Margaret Thatcher spank you?

Mr. HITCHENS: Well, I think it was because she had read my article in The New Statesmen, the then-socialist opposition magazine in London, in which I had said - contrary to the prevailing view at the time, which was that she was a frumpish suburban housewife of no talent, that I thought she had a great future, and that among other things I thought she had some kind of charisma which was highly sexual.

Anyway, she seemed to know who I was when we were introduced, and became rather flirtatious. And then we got into a fight, picked by me, about Zimbabwe, where as it happens I was right and she was wrong, but never mind. I sort of bowed to acknowledge her point. And then she said - I can still hear it - she said: No, bow lower.

So all volition deserting me, I did bow lower, and then straightened up again. She said: No, no, much lower. So again, I found myself sort of bending right forward. There were witnesses to this, as I say in the book. And all the while she'd been rolling up a parliamentary audit paper. The event - the party where we met was in the House of Lords - and stepped (unintelligible) smacked me right across my bottom.

And then, as I regain the vertical, with some difficulty, she walked away, rolling her hip - I swear it - and looked over her shoulder and said: Naughty boy.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. HITCHENS: And I trudged back across Westminster Bridge to my little dump of an apartment in North London, thinking this woman has definitely got something and it's amazing how people don't see it.