Sir Bernard Ingham: The uncivil servant

To his great delight, he's been called 'an obnoxious rent-a-spleen' and even 'a mound of poisoned suet'. But is Sir Bernard Ingham, Mrs Thatcher's infamous press secretary, really as bad as he's been painted?

I'm not quite sure where I had expected Sir Bernard Ingham to live, but I had not expected it to be Purley, one of south London's very last outposts, although I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's because he was such a big, noisy, powerful, centrifugal force for so long (as Mrs Thatcher's chief press secretary throughout her 11-year premiership) that I just hadn't pictured him living somewhere so, well, suburban and unhappening, somewhere so far from the Westminster/Whitehall axis.

But Purley it is, in the Twenties, Artex-dipped bungalow that he and his wife, Nancy, have lived in for the past 33 years, which has one of those almost vertical, cotoneastered back gardens dropping down to a small lawn. Where, it turns out, Sir Bernard is engaged in something of his own war. "Moss!" he growls. "An absolute pest!"

Moss, it seems, is a Purley-wide menace. "My neighbour removed seven sackfuls from his lawn recently. Seven sackfuls. Hmph!" Sir Bernard is gearing up for his own annual moss attack. I doubt he'll seek a UN resolution before proceeding. "The UN won't stand up and be counted, any more than the European Union will. I keep telling people that we have the kind of EU and UN that make the world safe for dictators, tyrants, the most bloodthirsty individuals..." The moss is very much in for it, I suspect.

I'd actually arrived at the little bungalow quite a bit earlier, descending gingerly though the almost vertical, cotoneastered front garden. Ding-dong. Sir Bernard himself answers the door, wearing clog-like grey felt slippers of the sort that I think I recognise from the Land's End catalogue, and a face that is not, to my knowledge, available mail order and, even if it were, would probably not be a bestseller. That said, his face is rather wonderful in its way. So lumpy. So grumpy. So made for going, "Hmph!" and, "Bunkum and balderdash!" In fact, it may even be "Hmph" and "Bunkum and balderdash" made flesh.

And the eyebrows. Of course, the eyebrows. The Crufts-worthy eyebrows. I tell him his eyebrows are quite something. "Everybody says so," he agrees, gleefully, "but they are very unruly. I have to comb them sometimes so that I can see properly, especially when I'm doing television. Robert Harris once said my eyebrows writhe and heave like a pair of lovesick squirrels." He laughs loudly, showing surprisingly small, childlike teeth. "I use that description at every opportunity," he adds.

One of the most delicious things about Sir Bernard is that he adores to be insulted. In his new book, The Wages of Spin, he proudly lists some of the insults he's received over the years: "an obnoxious rent-a-spleen" (Daily Mirror); "the sewer but not the sewerage" (John Biffen) and "a menace to the constitution" (Edward Heath). If he is at all well disposed towards me – "I can't stand Guardianistas any more than I can stand Independentistas," he says at one point – it may only be because The Independent once called him "a mound of poisoned suet". This, I know, would have pleased him enormously.

Into his living room, which may or may not be typical of Purley decor: swirly carpet, watercolours, gas fire, charming china knick-knacks of the small-shepherd-boy-with-dog variety, plus coasters showing a delightful waterfall scene somewhat obscured by "Sir Bernard Ingham" stamped right across them. "I'm president of the British Franchise Association and when I went to their headquarters they made them for me," he explains. I think we can safely assume that Sir Bernard has never been interested in glitz and ostentation which, anyway, has always been less of an Old Tory thing and much more of a New Labour one. I don't think Sir Bernard, for example, ever considered asking the Paymaster General for a £400,000 loan to finance a move to somewhere swankier, trendier, more Notting Hill. Moss uprisings aside, Sir Bernard and Purley might suit each other admirably.

It's straight down to business. "Where do you want to sit? There! Sit there!" Nancy, a former policewoman wearing a quilted green jacket of the sort I think I recognise from the Land's End catalogue (Land's End must be very big in Purley) brings Nescafé and then disappears, never to be glimpsed again. Maybe she fell off the garden.

As an opener, I obviously ask Sir Bernard if he misses being right at the centre of things, especially at a time like this. "No, I do not," he insists. OK, what would Mrs Thatcher make of this war business? "She wanted to finish it the last time, but she wasn't prime minister. John Major was. I don't suppose she'd have had international support, but then you never do if you want to do something drastic."

I put it to him that his book, a rant against the current Government's use of spin, might be badly timed. Blair isn't spinning now, is he? "His standing with thinking people has improved over recent months," he concedes, "because he is actually acting from a point of principle ,which nobody could accuse him of ever having done before. It all contrasts very sharply with his domestic approach, which has been ultra-cautious and a failure." Do you admire him? "I admire his conviction and commitment to a just and reasonable cause. But I'm the first to admit that he would carry greater conviction if, in my view, he had not capitulated all along to Irish terrorism. But you have to start somewhere." How come Blair hasn't managed to carry public opinion along with him? "The polls are amazingly contradictory." Come now, I say. The march... "Probably, there were more people at football matches that weekend than there were demonstrating. Not probably. I'm definitely certain there were. I've never thought much of marches. Hmph!"

Many, actually, regard Sir Bernard as Britain's first ever spin doctor, which is something he always denies quite hotly. ("Bunkum and balderdash!") He was, he will say, an impartial civil servant (he worked for Tony Benn and Barbara Castle before Thatcher) and not a party apparatchik à la Alastair Campbell. He never leaked. He never dictated the running order of stories. He did not browbeat journalists. "The idea that I would browbeat journalists." He did not have favourites. "The idea that I had favourites when, at the end, the Morning Star's incumbent in the lobby thanked me in public for treating everyone alike."

I'm not sure what this all means. That he's always been more spinned against than spinning? Whatever, there is a kind of un-Millbank, brutal honesty to him which, I suppose, some would say he can afford, now he's 70 and retired; but, then again, it might just be his style anyway. Whatever, it means he will answer a direct question, however vulgar and clumsy, directly. So, Sir Bernard, did you ever suspect Mr Major was having it off with Ms Currie? "Never had an inkling. Neither did Margaret. I found it very difficult to believe of John. I was astounded he had it in him, although nothing surprises me about Edwina Currie who seems a wonderful... publicity hound."

Next, Ken Clarke, whom I confide I've always had a soft spot for. "Everybody has a soft spot for Ken Clarke. If only he could have discovered a trace element of Euroscepticism he could have been leader of the Tory Party. One must admit he's an honourable and principled man, however wrong." Apropos of absolutely nothing, I enjoy his description of the Lib Dems. "A remarkably flexible party," he says, "always tailored to local requirements."

In his retirement, he's not exactly under-employed. The books. The journalism. The broadcasting. The moss war. The after-dinner speaking. "My record is 123 prepared talks in one year." President of the British Franchise Association, and then a list of other positions, each more deliciously right-wing and politically incorrect than the last.

Here goes: secretary of Supporters For Nuclear Energy, "which will endear me to many of your readers, I'm sure". Vice president of Country Guardian, "an organisation to stop our hills, usually the wildest and grandest hills, being colonised by wind farms. I do think it's extraordinary environmental vandalism to put wind-power stations on top of unspoilt hills, desecrating the line of landscape for no purpose whatsoever. It's intermittent electricity. Wind farms will never close a single nuclear power station." And non-executive director of McDonald's UK.

I'm not exactly sure what the McDonald's thing means. "It means I attend board meetings and the McDonald's chairman rings me up for advice. I keep in touch with how the company is progressing and its been one of the more rewarding experiences, frankly."

Do you like the food?

"Yes. I do. People will say that's the final nail in my coffin but I think there is an enormous snobbery about food in Britain, I can't stand those food snobs who look down their long, aquiline noses at McDonald's and take their kids in at the weekends. I don't go in every day, but I certainly go there for coffee. It's most reasonably priced, unlike the pretentious stuff you get elsewhere."

Are you a Big Mac man?

"Generally speaking, although I do like the McChicken Premiere. I think that's wonderful. That really is a very good line that we've got."

I struggle to think of something cheerful to say about McDonald's. It saved us from Wimpy, at least? "Can't comment on that because Wimpy are part of the British Franchise Association. Hmph!" Brilliant food for people with no teeth, as you don't actually have to chew anything? "Hmph! Hmph!" Munificent employers? "An enormous number of people lambast them for low pay – it's not that low-paid – whereas they ought to praise them for giving about 50,000 youngsters a year their first work experience in a disciplined environment and if that isn't a social contribution to Britain, then I don't know what is!" Sir Bernard has one son (a journalist on the Daily Express), plus two small grandchildren. I can't say for sure what sort of granddad he makes, but doubt he's a Werther's Originals one.

His right-wingery can perplex people, mostly because it hasn't always been so. He was born in Hebden Bridge, Yorkshire, the son of cotton weavers. More, in his early days, he was a labour correspondent for The Guardian, a Labour council candidate and a union activist. He says he thinks his slide to the right began under Harold Wilson's union-fraught premiership, but I'm not so sure. I think, possibly, it happened in 1979, the moment he began working for Mrs Thatcher, with whom he, perhaps, fell rather in love. (So much for civil service impartiality!) Indeed, in his book, he variously describes her as "comely", "sparkling" and "flirtatious".

Did you find her physically alluring, then, Sir Bernard? "She always was an attractive woman. She had not merely a film star's attractiveness, she could also behave like a film star when she chose to do so." (Is now the moment to tell him that Gwyneth Paltrow is unlikely to play her in the biopic?) "A very attractive woman, invariably immaculate, and a handbagger of men – statesmen and politicians – the world over."

I say the current state of the Tory party must break her heart. "That's going it a bit, but I think she is very depressed and disappointed by it." Of course, together they had their PR disasters such as, perhaps, her humiliation on Nationwide in 1983, when housewife Diana Gould questioned her on the sinking of the Belgrano. Did you watch from behind your (Dralon) sofa, Sir Bernard? "This," he says, "is what happens to politicians in the run-up to a general election. But I don't think Margaret ever forgave... you know, that woman who now presents Desert Island Discs." Sue Lawley? "Never forgave her. I suppose the woman was a plant." I think this last remark might be quite typical of Mr Ingham. Everybody is up to no good and busy conspiring, apart from him.

Anyway, time to go. He's having lunch with a junior minister. Something to do with the British Franchise Association. I wish him luck with his moss problem, and we part affectionately. Of course, as one of the Independentistas, I can't agree with much of what he says, just as I can't think of Thatcher as a sex bomb, no matter how hard I try. (Which isn't very hard, I admit. By the way, is now the moment to tell him that Julia Roberts is unlikely to star in the biopic either?)

Still, that's Sir Bernard for you, and you can see he's an honourable and principled man, however wrong. There is something just a little bit irresistible about him. Unlike the McChicken Premiere.

'The Wages of Spin' by Sir Bernard Ingham is published by John Murray, priced £18.99