The Iron Legacy.

When I was 19 I applied for a job at a new hotel opening in Sydney. I went to one of those mass interview days and one of the 'speed dating' style questions was 'Which celebrity would you most like to meet and why?'

Panic! I was stumped. I racked my brain. Did I want to meet Elle McPherson? No. David Boon? No. Tom Cruise? Hell no and that was before we knew how crazy he really was. Suddenly I realised! It was Maggie Thatcher. Mrs T, the Baroness of Grantham. 'Margaret Thatcher' I said, 'Because I think it must be amazing to run a country. I'd love to ask her about it.'

I didn't get the job. Turns out they really wanted to hire people who wanted to meet Elle McPherson, Boonie or Tom Cruise (though, if you know Sydney you know the urban myth that everyone has already met Tom Cruise doing lines of Coke in the bathroom at the Pacific Blue Room on Oxford Street). Perhaps my would-be employer thought Elle was more likely to stay at the hotel than Maggie. Maybe they thought I'd badger Boonie for his political views, or irritate Tom with questions about his secret plan to fight inflation.

I have never been bothered with celebrity. In the olden days they were mostly people who pretended for a living (actors) or who hit, swiped or sat on things (sportsmen). Today they are orange-coloured people from Perth or Essex who take their clothes off in the jungle while cooking up a 10 course food storm in Dorset. I am not interested in these people. They are focused on feelings - anger, sadness, triumph, depression. And, to paraphrase Maggie in the film the The Iron Lady, it is ideas and action that is interesting, not feelings.

But why, living on the other side of the world and not even a teenager when she left office, was she so top of mind? I doubt at 19 I could have named a single policy of her time as leader and if I could, I would probably have disagreed with many of them. I've worked out, in this last week, that I think what attracted me to her was power. Her conviction, and convincing leadership, communicated power and it was power dressed in the form of a fellow woman. I must have seen someone who thought, then spoke, then assumed everyone who disagreed was insane. Heaven. We aspire to be what we see around us, or we don't aspire to what we don't see around us. What I love when I see reels of Thatcher is her suredness, and someone who says what they think.

Since her death, Channel 4 newsman Jon Snow has run much footage of his interviews with Maggie over her 11 year Premiership. Poor Jon (or, 'that dreadful Pinko' as Maggie may have remembered him), tried his best to best her. But it was never going to be. He would ask a question, she would respond with a silent stare, followed by the crushing line 'What a STUPID QUESTION!' or 'I think I've given even YOU enough material to write a decent story.' Brilliant stuff - Maggie, over 30 years ago, squashing them verbally left, right and non-committed centre. But she was also, by many accounts this week, a very personable listener and communicator. Even as the Falklands rolled on, it is reported she went every week to her constituency to hold surgeries as usual. Her plain funeral service this week - very deliberately not a memorial - reflected her thoughtfulness on the subject of God and service. You do not read, even from detractors, that she was in politics for personal gain.

What attracted people to Margaret Thatcher is what attracts people to Boris Johnson - both sound as if they mean what they say. It is power through conviction. When we listen to Osborne, Clegg, Cameron or Milliband we hear politicians prevaricating. We expect u-turns and we get them. Of course that is our fault. We say we want one thing (conviction) but we vote for another (coalition consensus). We want politicians who stick to their guns, but we swing our favour like a judge on the X Factor. Maggie spoke like the skilled workers - the 'C2s' in marketing speak - who consistently voted for her (and still poll strongly in favour of her) - because she came from their stock. Boris appeals to the rag tag urchin in all of us, because he's a rag tag urchin. They appear as outsiders on the inside. One of them was.

The lesson I take from not meeting Maggie is not to aspire to power but to aspire to finding a path of conviction, and enjoying the pursuit of it. In the face of personalities like Maggie, it is difficult to measure up. It is hard, sometimes, to remember that life is not over today, or tomorrow. It is not too late. There is time. Not infinite time. But time.

Katherine Burgdorf