You may have noticed there’s a General Election coming up. And while all the focus will be on those candidates securing a seat in Westminster, spare a thought for the many more whose 15 minutes of fame will come to an end with defeat. Except, just once in

While perhaps the most Marmite of all politicians will be remembered for her premiership during the 1980s, it was almost 30 years earlier that a young Margaret Thatcher took her first tentative steps towards Westminster.

Then the little-known Margaret Roberts, she tried twice, in the post-war elections of 1950 and 1951, to gain some ground in the safe Labour seat of Dartford.

She failed to win on both occasions, but did manage to grow the Tory vote on each occasion.

She didn’t come away completely empty-handed, however. After attending a dinner at the Paint Trade Federation she met Denis Thatcher in the town.

Amid such romantic surroundings, it wasn’t quite love at first sight, with the future Prime Minister describing him as “not a very attractive creature”. That must have hurt. Nonetheless, we can only assume she got over that as they married two years later.

He can have barely imagined how his surname would end up being one of the most famous in British political history.

Three years later she was rejected as a Tory candidate for Orpington. The local party probably would go on to feel a bit like the fellow who turned down the Beatles.

After pausing to raise her two young children, she tried again in 1959 when she ran in the safe Tory seat of Finchley and the rest, as they say, was history. Mrs Thatcher would eventually rise to take over the keys of Number 10 in 1979 and lead the nation until her ousting from office in 1990.

Mrs Thatcher stood for Dartford, twice, and was beaten, twice and inset; Margaret Roberts and future husband Denis Thatcher who she met in Dartford