The Iron Lady vs. the loo

Turns out it might not be such a bad thing that the old Warwick Hotel is no more: According to government documents recently released to the UK National Archives, former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher spent some time locked in her bathroom at the hotel during a visit to Houston in 1977. Details of the trip, which took place two years before Thatcher became prime minister, were released under a law that allows top-secret government papers to be made public after 30 years. Though the file contains assorted other goodies, the bathroom problem is what's been making headlines across Britain. To quote from the papers:

"The start of the visit [to Houston] on Friday evening was marred by the failure of the Warwick Hotel (chosen by the English Speaking Union) to provide either a hairdresser or someone to press Mrs Thatcher's dress," observed an official at the British consulate in the city. "Both of these had been ordered by the Secretary of ESU and they had, at our request, double-checked that everything was in order.

"The hotel, in fact, became a joke with the Thatcher party. The inside door handle of the bathroom would not work properly and both Mr Thatcher and Mrs Thatcher had to be released from bondage on different occasions.

"There were no dirty laundry facilities on the Saturday and Mrs Thatcher's secretary and mine did the laundry at the latter's home on the Saturday evening. This was all rather surprising as the Warwick is considered to be one of the best hotels in Houston."

The Warwick, of course, is now the Hotel ZaZa. We would assume part of the ZaZafication of the old building involved ensuring that the bathroom doors don't stick, but we can't be sure: Bloomberg reports that the ZaZa refused to comment on the matter. (Turns out Thatcher wasn't the only British politician who's ended up locked in the loo, either: According to the Daily Mail, current PM Gordon Brown got trapped in a bathroom during a 1994 discussion with Tony Blair. Details, unfortunately, are few.)

While in Houston, Thatcher also visited NASA — her entourage, consisting of her husband and two staff members, was so small that British Consul General Roy Fox suggested they could all pile into Fox's Oldsmobile 98 to make the trip to Clear Lake — and participated in a press conference there at which she was asked a question by a CBS reporter about the troubled British economy. That, it seems, was the other black mark on her Houston trip: "She said she would answer questions on her visit to NASA but not about the British economy and that this was being rude to her hosts," the record reports. Later, she asked her secretary to remind her not to give any interviews to CBS. Oops.