Salman Rushdie: 'I was groped by Margaret Thatcher'

Margaret Thatcher had a surprisingly 'touchy-feely' side, according to Salman Rushdie. Photo / Getty Images

She will always be remembered as the fiercely uncompromising Iron Lady who struck terror into her political opponents.

But in private Margaret Thatcher had a surprisingly 'touchy-feely' side, according to author Salman Rushdie, who has revealed he was even 'groped' by the late Prime Minister.

During an America TV discussion about claims that former US Vice-President Joe Biden touched a number of women inappropriately, Rushdie, 71, said: "I have a little experience of being sexually violated by a powerful politician. In my case it was Margaret Thatcher.

Salman Rushdie, writer, at the Cheltenham Literature Festival on October 10, 2015. Photo / Getty Images

"The thing that people don't know about Margaret Thatcher is that she was very touchy-feely. You'd sit with her, and she'd put her hands all over you. I had this meeting with her, and she was, like, pawing at me, and I thought, 'I'm being groped by the Prime Minister!'"

The writer and Thatcher were often at logger-heads politically. However, he was always grateful to her for the firm stance she took in reaction to the threat on his life from Iran following the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses in 1988, when she provided him with police protection.

Speaking on the HBO show Real Time With Bill Maher, Rushdie also described a risqué encoun- ter between Thatcher and Christopher Hitchens, the famously outspoken commentator who died in 2011.

Rushdie said: "Margaret Thatcher, by the way, spanked Christopher Hitchens. She heard Christopher had written something she didn't like, and she met him at a party conference, and she said to him, 'You've been a naughty boy, haven't you?'

"And he said, 'Well, yes, Prime Minister, I suppose I have'.

"And she said, 'You'd better bend over'. She made him bend over, and she spanked him with a rolled-up magazine."

Rushdie has previously spoken about the softer side of Thatcher. Following her death aged 87 in 2013, he said: "She would tap you on the arm and say, 'everything OK?'

"I hadn't expected that touch of tenderness."