LIKE A particularly difficult-to-shift odour emanating from the sole of one’s shoe, unpleasant rumour and innuendo have followed Sir Mark Thatcher around since the mid-Eighties. But despite an army of journalists - at least one private detective was hired by a national newspaper - investigating long-running claims that he used his mother’s then influential name to win lucrative contracts and dabble in arms deals, nothing has ever stuck.
The same cannot be said of the former racing-driver’s reputation for arrogance, incompetence and, above all, his finely-honed ability to have been a continuing source of embarrassment to his mother during her premiership from 1979 to 1990.
One of
his earliest escapades came about when he got himself lost for six days in the Sahara desert while taking part in the Paris-Dakar rally - one of the few times he managed to knock his mum off the front pages of the newspapers. The Iron Lady was visibly distraught at the news and broke down in public, something which did not happen again until she quit as Prime Minister. She then pulled out all the stops, telling Britain’s ambassador in Algiers to find out what had happened to her then 28-year old son.
A full-blown rescue mission ensued involving ten aircraft and costing an estimated £300,000. The fiasco - and his reaction to it, insisting others were to blame and that he was not in fact lost - did little to endear him to the press, who promptly nicknamed him "the Boy Mark". But to the devoted Lady Thatcher, however, her son could do no wrong. "Mark could sell snow to the Eskimos, and sand to the Arabs," she is reported to have said.
Thatcher, who inherited his late father’s baronetcy last year, left Harrow in 1971 with just three O-levels, did not go to university and failed his accountancy exams three times. He trundled through a series of jobs, each of which lasted about a year, dabbled in the Hong Kong business world and even attempted the playboy’s refuge of racing driving, but crashed too many cars. In 1977 he set up Mark Thatcher Racing, a car racing company which swiftly ran into cash problems.
But it was his business dealings abroad that were to prove a thorn in the side of the Thatcher family - and ergo the Tory hierarchy, many of whom saw his seedy image as a distraction from her invincible aura. His exploitations of his mother’s connections have been well-documented, although he insists that everything he did would have been achievable even if she had never become PM.
Born on August 15, 1953, Sir Mark and his twin sister Carol were delivered by Caesarean while their father, Denis, was watching a Test match at the Oval. Recounting life with Lady Thatcher, Sir Mark said he found that if he and his sister behaved reasonably well, then there was no trouble. Alas, for Mama Thatcher, at least as far as her son is concerned, there has been little but.
The first serious example emerged, amid a storm of controversy, in 1981 when he flew to Oman with his consultancy company, Monteagle Marketing, to help a cement firm win a multi-million pound contract only a day after his mother arrived for an official visit. It was claimed the events represented a political conflict of interest.
Although no wrongdoing has ever been proven, there have been a series of other cases in which he was accused of shamelessly cashing in on his mother’s name. The worst was the long-running and continuing allegation that he received an enormous commission - up to £20 million - on the £20 billion Al Yamamah military contract between Saudi Arabia and the UK while his mother was PM.
But while no hard facts have ever been found to back up the claim, there is documentary evidence linking him to the deal. A 1989 memorandum written by a US defence company executive, purporting to be an account of the executive’s conversation with an employee of the US embassy in Riyadh about Saudi arms sales, mentions his name in connection with $4 billion.
In 1994, the Sunday Times reproduced transcripts of alleged conversations in which members of the Saudi royal family talk about Mark Thatcher’s "excellent connections" with the British government during negotiations of the two-stage contract, signed in 1985 and 1988. It concluded that he made £12 million out of the deal, one of the world’s biggest arms sales, but also noted that his actions were not illegal.
The story created a stink in parliament and was quickly referred to the all-party public accounts committee, but the committee decided that an investigation of Mr Thatcher’s involvement would be outside its remit. Thatcher’s take on it has only added fuel to the fire. Asked about whether he was an arms dealer, he said: "I’ve never sold a penknife. I may have sold a letter opener."
He denied receiving £12 million, but his denials have not stemmed the flow of allegations. In 1995, it was claimed that he used a hand-written note from his mother addressed to the ruler of Abu Dhabi to further his career and secure a profitable business deal. In the mid-nineties his name was mentioned in connection with the Pergau Dam affair in which British aid to Malaysia was allegedly linked to a £1.3 billion contract placed by Malaysia in Britain. But nothing was ever proved.
After the Sunday Times story broke, his image as a wealthy arms industry fixer was shattered by a Financial Times story which investigated his net worth - once estimated at £60 million. A revised figure of between £3 million and £5 million was quoted, alongside a revised description of Thatcher as "a sort of Harrovian Arthur Daley with a famous Mum".
His notoriety was not welcomed by Sir Bernard Ingham, Lady Thatcher’s press secretary when she was Prime Minister. Asked by Sir Mark how he could best help his mother win the 1987 general election, Ingham reportedly replied: "Leave the country." It was not just the Tories he upset, however.
Tam Dalyell, Labour MP for Linlithgow, speaking with the protection of parliamentary privilege, once accused Thatcher of having been "up to the neck" in selling arms-making equipment to the Iraqis - after a Channel 4 Dispatches programme raised questions about his business dealings. The arrogant attitude with which he rubbed people up the wrong way was not a result of his mother’s position in Downing Street, however.
One schoolboy from his days at Harrow described him as having a "confident and cocky manner, which was sometimes misplaced". Robin Ward, quoted in the book, Thatcher’s Gold, The Life and Times of Mark Thatcher by Paul Halloran and Mark Hollingsworth, said: "He did have a slightly unfortunate air about him in that he tended to upset people by his mannerisms."
His "unfortunate air" was all the more galling for many Thatcher acolytes, who compared him unfavourably with his twin, Carol Thatcher, who has made a successful career as a journalist with little fuss.
Following what was described by Hollingsworth as a "Mark Thatcher industry in the British media, which has produced as many myths and hoaxes as genuine disclosures", Thatcher quit Britain for Dallas, Texas. There, he promoted Lotus cars and met glamorous Diane Burgdorf, once described by her car dealer father as "just an ordinary millionairess". The couple married in 1987 and have two children.
But his US dealings were soon in the news for all the wrong reasons. The security alarms company, Emergency Networks, of which he was a non-executive director, went bust. The US authorities claimed it owed $1.7 million in taxes but he was later cleared of any liability. He was then sued by a partner in a Texas fuel company, who accused him of conspiracy, fraud, usury, deception and perjury. He later settled with an unconfirmed out-of-court sum said to be £330,000.
He moved to the elegant suburb of Constantia, in Cape Town, in 1995 with his son, Michael, now 15, and Amanda Margaret, 11, to escape what he called "the Texas crap", but it wasn’t long before he was in trouble again.
In 1998, his affairs were once more under the microscope, when the South African authorities began investigating claims he had been running a loan scheme.
It was alleged that Sir Mark offered unofficial loans to hundreds of police officers, military personnel and civil servants, and persuaded them with debt collectors and high interest charges when they defaulted.
The latest unsavoury chapter in the life of the former Prime Minister’s son came yesterday, with news of his arrest over allegations he was involved in a planned coup in Equatorial Guinea. Whether it is just another embarrassment, only time will tell. But whatever the outcome, the smell is unlikely to vanish.
