Many of you will have read that Baroness Trumpington died, aged 96, on Monday.
Announcing the news, her son Adam Barker said, "She did not make it to 100 but she had a bloody good innings."
I knew a little bit about her but having read several of the many obituaries that have been published in the past 48 hours I realise I was barely scratching the surface of an extraordinary life.
I knew she had been a smoker because I'd seen photographs of her with Lord Harris of High Cross, chairman of Forest, outside parliament on No Smoking Day.
They were members of the Lords and Commons Pipe and Cigar Smokers Club and this annual photo opp often made the front pages.
She gave up cigarettes in 2001 when she was 79. Later she is reported to have said:
"Is the noble Lord aware that, at the age of 80, there are very few pleasures left to me, but one of them is passive smoking?"
In 2012 she appeared on Have I Got News For You and this happened:
I met her just once – at a 'Libertarian Lunch' organised by Boisdale Life magazine (and sponsored by Forest) in February 2017.
She was in a wheelchair and rather frail but in good spirits.
I'm told that her ghost-written memoir, Coming Up Trumps, published in 2014, is well worth reading. The subject however was less impressed.
Interviewed for the Guardian she said: "I don't understand all this excitement. I didn't write the damn book, and I haven't read it either."
It's worth noting too her thoughts on Margaret Thatcher who gave her a job in government as a health minister.
Not one but two great ladies. RIP.
PS. By coincidence I am having dinner tonight with Ranald Macdonald, MD of Boisdale Restaurants and publisher of Boisdale Life.
Click on the link below to see Ranald with Baroness Trumpington at that 'Libertarian Lunch' last year:
Baroness Trumpington is wined and dined at Boisdale (Evening Standard).