Ann Widdecombe obituary

Former Conservative minister who played up to the role of British eccentric in a post-parliamentary TV career Considering that she only ever held junior ministerial office, the former Conservative MP Ann Widdecombe, who has died aged 78, had a peculiarly strong hold on the public imagination. This was largely for her non-political, post-parliamentary career as a television personality, with appearances as a contestant on Strictly Come Dancing in 2010, being hauled good-naturedly like a sack of potatoes around a dancefloor, and in the 21st series of Celebrity Big Brother in 2018, on which she was a runner-up. She played up to the role of British eccentric, part admonitory maiden aunt (which she was), part pantomime dame (which she also was, twice, at Dartford in 2011 and High Wycombe the following year). Yet Widdecombe was a deeply serious politician, an MP for Maidstone in Kent for 23 years (Maidstone and the Weald from 1997) and a competent minister in the decidedly unglamorous departments of Social Security and Employment, and with responsibility for prisons at the Home Office. If her persona consciously or otherwise mimicked a long line of robustly rightwing, uncompromising Tory