Mike Lyle wrote:

For a veteran
politician, he seemed surprisingly stiff, to the point of
haughtiness, before the camera.

(snip)

That's the way he is. I've met him three times, though never in his
garden, and in three different location, situation and circumstance he
was as stiff as an ironing board. The last time I saw him was during a
rally we had organised in his honnour years after I had met him at the
bbc. I was then a very anxious fighting housing activist during the
Shity, sorry, City Challenge 'competition' Heseltine had set up for the
undesirable communities in his dearest country. He recognised me from
somewhere then and I thought he would perhaps then descend from his
high and mighty horse and talk to me as a human being. But sadly no.
However, I felt I could talk to him and I could see he knew me and that
was enough to shut him up. The local paper felt that there was
something there too as they took a picture of me carrying my baby,
standing in front of Heseltine pointing a finger at me, with the
caption "Fighting Maureen tells the Minister the grim reality". I'm not
called Maureen though ;o)