A Kingston resident has recalled his personal memories of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who died on Monday aged 87.

Hilton Tims, husband of the Surrey Comet’s features editor June Sampson, was a reporter and feature writer at the Daily Mail’s Manchester office when he was sent to cover the Conservative Party conference in October 1962.

He arrived in Llandudno the day before the conference with just three hours to find a lead story and send it back to the office.

As luck would have it, he spotted Mrs Thatcher – then simply the MP for Finchley – striding towards the town’s pier.

He said: “I spoke to various grandees who were wandering around the lobby, could find nothing worth writing about, and was feeling anxious about the looming copy deadline.

“I asked if I could join her and she agreed, and told me she was making the walk as a sentimental journey.”

Mrs Thatcher told him: “This was where I started my political career. At the 1947 conference here I walked along this pier with John Miller, the Dartford chairman, and at the end he asked me if I had ever thought of standing as a candidate.

“I hadn’t, but that remark started me thinking. Four months later his constituency adopted me, so naturally the end of this pier means a lot to me.

“That’s why I thought my first job when I arrived today must be to come back here. It hasn’t changed.”

Mr Tims said: “This little tale gave me a page lead in the Mail, but it didn’t quite end there.

“I went to the Newspaper Society’s annual charity bash 25 years later, which was customarily attended by the Prime Minister of the day.

“This time the PM was Margaret T and I approached her, certain she wouldn’t remember me. But she did, in every detail.

“Twenty-five years previously I had been impressed by an unexpectedly sentimental side to her nature.

“I was bowled over by her phenomenal memory and genuine interest in people.”

Baroness Thatcher’s funeral will be held next Wednesday at St Paul’s Cathedral.