Island Life Magazine Ltd June/July 2006 | Page 39

Edwina - Still Stunning FEATURE Below: Edwina in full flow at the WI meeting held at Medina. Bottom: All the money raised from book sales goes to Edwina’s chosen charity. at Sixty She’s a woman who knows how to hit the headlines, and even though she collects her bus pass later this year, there is little likelihood of this pensioner stepping out of the limelight. Edwina Currie invites love and loathing in equal measure with her political and romantic bombshells, but whatever the controversy, she never fails to touch everything with the glamorous style that she has made her own. The former MP, who after her election defeat in 1997 took up a new career as a writer and media personality, was on the Island recently to speak at the Women’s Institute annual meeting at Medina Theatre. Her talk was highly entertaining, even for a mere bloke like me, and she spared the time in a busy schedule to talk to me afterwards. She was anxious to return to her daughter, who was about to give birth, but she was showing no signs of turning into a dear old granny. Glamorous and forthright, she answered my questions with the confidence and good humour that has sustained her throughout her career. I asked her what was her worst moment as an MP, and she replied without hesitation. “Eggs,” she said. In 1988 she caused a furore when, as a junior health minister, she warned of the widespread danger of salmonella )