Margaret Thatcher visiting British troops on the Falkland islands. Photograph: PA
So the Oscar-winning success of The Queen has prompted the cautious British film industry to do what it does best and try to cash in again on a proven winner. Maggie the Movie is being written by Brian Fillis, who wrote the TV drama about Fanny Craddock and her husband Johnny.
You can see their train of thought, can't you, Mrs Thatcher bullying Denis as Faddy henpecked ("First catch your hen," as Mrs Beaton once advised) Johnny.
Helen Mirren must, of course, have first refusal on the part - if Pathé and BBC Films can still afford her post-Oscar. But the task of getting Maggie right will prove that much greater than Her Maj. Though virtually twins - the Queen is six months younger and in much better shape - Mrs Thatcher was always a much more divisive figure, loathed more than she was loved. Unlike the Queen that was what she was for.
The period which Fillis is being paid to tackle is the run-up to the Falklands war of April 2 1982. That sounds like a serious mistake for a start. The real drama would focus on what happened immediately after news started filtering through to Whitehall that Friday morning that something was up in the south Atlantic.
I was the Guardian's sketchwriter in those days, but also did a regular turn as a lobby correspondent to keep in touch with the real world. I was on duty that Friday. At the press conference I asked John Nott (defence) and Lord Carrington (foreign secretary) if they planned to resign over the screw-up whereby the cabinet had ignored repeated warnings from an unlikely trio: ex-premier and ex-Royal Navy lieutenant, Jim Callaghan; his estranged foreign secretary and protege, David Owen of the SDP; and Julian Amery, an old imperial warhorse.
Looking back on it, all three probably had good intelligence sources, except that the intelligence community messed it up (again), the subject of the subsequent Franks. Anyway, Nott said "no" and Carrington merely shook his head vaguely. Twenty-four hours later after the government had been savaged by all sides in the famous Saturday debate Nott had resigned and the 40,000-strong Falklands Task Force was being amassed for its amazing 8,000-mile journey to retake Port Stanley.
Astonishing stuff, and much more interesting than the days before the Argentinian attack - when military signals were ignored as the invasion force steamed towards the islands, their 1,500 inhabitants and their sheep.
The ups and downs of the campaign were among the most remarkable events I have witnessed from the press gallery. Labour's leader, Michael Foot, was among the most patriotic champions of the Task Force as he had been of the coalition of 1940.
Do not believe those who say the "Falklands Factor" was what saved Maggie from defeat. Yes, the economy was suffering the effects of crudely applied monetarism, but the unions were in retreat and Labour was hopelessly split. What the Falklands did for Mrs Thatcher was made her world famous as the Iron Lady. What it did for Britain was to signal that, after a near ungovernable decade, the country was again capable of resolute action on the world stage, however Lilliputian the occasion.
So there is plenty for Fallis to get stuck into there but who are the key characters? Maggie, obviously. Michael Foot, Jim Callaghan, old Amery, young Owen, the aristocratic Carrington, the ever-loyal Whitelaw, the gallant arch-critic, Tam Dalyell, General Galtieri if the structure allows. The mandarin Lord Franks as the narrator perhaps, or the Guardian's columnist, Peter Jenkins, who improbably sided with the Trots against the war. And that deadpan bloke (what was he called?) who acted as spokesman for the ministry of defence on TV, he should be in their somewhere.
Who will play them? I don't know. That's your job.
