If it weren’t for Betty Boothroyd, my wife would never have gone out with me

A Tiller Girl, a “try and try again” Labour candidate, a ferociously effective moderate MP who helped defeat the hard Left, and a hugely successful Commons Speaker.

All of those things were Baroness Boothroyd, although to her many friends, she was always just Betty. To all who saw her in action in “the chair”, she was reckoned to be easily the best post-war holder of the job.

But to me, she was also the woman who helped persuade my future wife to go out with me because she was so impressed that Betty was a pal. What did the trick was that she’d met us at the door of Speaker’s House, then as now one of London’s best-kept secrets, a tiny figure in her stocking feet.

After pouring several massive gin and tonics, she was soon perched on a huge seat amid the elegant furnishings of her new abode and laughing uproariously at the latest Commons gossip, in that distinctive Benson & Hedges-induced throaty voice of hers. Cigarettes, when I knew her best, were a constant companion.

She couldn’t help but impress everyone who got to know her. She was very much aware of the importance of her role as Speaker and was always careful to maintain the dignity of the office. However, there were no artificial airs and graces and she quickly put people at ease on meeting.

She did like to occasionally shock. Always a handsome woman and impeccably dressed, with a special liking for sapphires, she had no shortage of suitors although she did keep her private life strictly private. However, of men in general, she pronounced that they were “messy buggers”.

I had got to know her when she shot to political prominence as a key player on Labour’s ruling national executive, where she assisted in defeating the hard Left supporters of Tony Benn, paving the way for Sir Tony Blair’s landslide victory in 1997.

But it was once she had been elected Speaker that she became a national figure, even if she always maintained close links with those who had helped her get there.

Another thing she never forgot was her stage background. She loved a sing-song and once, before becoming Speaker, she started an impromptu rendition from Guys and Dolls at a Labour Party conference hotel in Bournemouth.

Years previously, she had once played Miss Adelaide, the female lead in the aforementioned musical, and that night belted out one of the songs with journalists, delegates and even some union barons present joining in.

Furthermore, even after assuming high public office, music remained a love of her private life; so much so that musical soirees often turned the elegant Speaker’s House, overlooking the Thames, into the best “salon” in the whole of London.

I did have a brief chat with Betty a few years ago in the House of Lords restaurant where, as was normal for this always elegant lady, she was constantly surrounded by friends and admirers.

I was only too happy to join them in paying homage to the lady who became famous by telling MPs, when she assumed the chair, “Call me Madam”.