91Èȱ¬

Carol Thatcher, writer, journalist, broadcaster and Queen of the Jungle (winner of ITV1's I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here!) has been exploring her mother's roots in Grantham.

Carol's special journey to the small town that is credited with having a big impact on her mother's political beliefs features on 91Èȱ¬ One's Inside Out programme (East Midlands and Yorkshire & Lincolnshire) on Monday 2 November at 7.30pm.

It is 30 years since Margaret Thatcher swept to power as Britain's first woman Prime Minister. On the steps of Downing Street the newly-elected Prime Minister paid tribute to the Lincolnshire town where she grew up.

"I just owe almost everything to my own father. I really do. He brought me up to believe all the things that I do believe and they're just the values on which I've fought the election."

"And it's passionately interesting for me that the things that I learned in a small town, in a very modest home, are just the things that I believe have won the election."

Carol visited the former grocery store where Margaret Hilda Roberts was born in 1925 and where she lived above the shop. Today it is a health and beauty treatment centre, Living Health. The owner Sandra Good told Carol the shop is on the Maggie tourist trail.

"We have a lot of people coming to have their photographs taken outside and we had a man from America last year he came in and we took him upstairs he was really pleased. I thought he was going to kiss the carpet!"

During her visit, Carol also visited her mother's former schools, Huntingtower Primary and Kesteven and Grantham Girls' School, where she may have met a future Iron Lady. One of the school's head girls told her she has ambitions herself to be in Number 10 one day.

Carol Thatcher says: "Grantham has always had presence in my life but I'd rarely been there. So to visit my mother's old haunts and to speak to some of her school friends was fascinating. It has helped me fill in some of the gaps."

91Èȱ¬ Inside Out East Midlands is on Monday 2 November 2009, 91Èȱ¬Â One, 7.30pm and can also be viewed via 91Èȱ¬ iPlayer.

BG