Never mind the Sex Pistols ... but don’t forget to mention Bob Marley in Jamaica

MARGARET THATCHER’S aides felt compelled to warn her that she “may not enjoy” an interview with a journalist from the music magazine Smash Hits, today’s newly released papers from her archive reveal.

The Prime Minister was also advised that she could bolster her street credibility by including a reference to the reggae musician Bob Marley in a speech that had been written for her during a visit to Jamaica.

In preparation for the magazine interview, Mrs Thatcher was urged to show she was “confident and relaxed” while navigating questions on contemporary music and her personal tastes, in an attempt to appeal to the youth population.

She was supplied with a description of several music genres, including punk rock, which, Downing Street officials determined to be a “very basic musical style” featuring “antiestablishment acts”.

It added: “Other punk acts such as The Clash and The Damned were popular for a while but when the Sex Pistols split up in 1978 the style died out, to be replaced by the current technological musical era featuring computers, synthesizers and videos.”

Referencing Lady Thatcher’s earlier appearance on the children’s TV show Saturday

Superstore, it went on: “The important thing is to show you are confident and relaxed. “The way you handled the

Superstore appearance is still the subject of praise from youngsters.”

Sir Bernard Ingham, her press secretary at the time, who appears to have been copied into the briefing note “for information”, told

The Yorkshire Post last night that it had not been the only bizarre musical encounter arranged for Mrs Thatcher.

Party officials, he said, had booked her on to a TV show with the singer Barry Manilow.

“I tried to keep the tone high up – others wanted to lower it,” Sir Bernard said. Chris Collins, of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation, said the Prime Minister would have been “well aware” of The Sex Pistols, inset, given the “controversy” they stoked in the late 1970s. He said: “When she was leader of the opposition, she was much more aware of what was in the papers, on TV and so on. She had more time to absorb the stories. “She will have known about them. She would not necessarily have wanted to be reminded about them.” He added: “I think she was fairly well clued up. Number 10 probably prudently estimated her knowledge of these things as zero, and they wouldn’t therefore get it wrong.”

The Prime Minister’s musical knowledge was further tested during a visit to Jamaica in July 1987, when she addressed a lunch with Prime Minister Edward Seaga, the papers reveal.

Private Secretary Charles Powell, who mentioned Bob Marley’s Get Up, Stand Up in his draft speech, wrote to Lady Thatcher: “You will see that I have made references to Jamaican reggae music and modern Jamaican poetry, with which you may well not be entirely familiar! But the Jamaicans are very proud of them and a reference in the speech could go down very well.”

He attached the lyrics to Marley’s song.

The important thing is to show you are confident and relaxed. Advice to Mrs Thatcher ahead of her interview with Smash Hits magazine.