The "Dear Bill" letters were a regular feature in the British satirical magazine Private Eye

Private Eye

Private Eye is a fortnightly British satirical and current affairs magazine, edited by Ian Hislop.Since its first publication in 1961, Private Eye has been a prominent critic and lampooner of public figures and entities that it deemed guilty of any of the sins of incompetence, inefficiency,...

, purporting to be the private correspondence of Denis Thatcher

Denis Thatcher

Major Sir Denis Thatcher, 1st Baronet, MBE, TD was a British businessman, and the husband of the former British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. He was born in Lewisham, London, the elder child of a New Zealand-born British businessman, Thomas Herbert Thatcher, and his wife Kathleen, née Bird...

, husband of the then-Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...

. It was written by Richard Ingrams

Richard Ingrams

Richard Ingrams is an English journalist, a co-founder and second editor of the British satirical magazine Private Eye, and now editor of The Oldie magazine.-Career:...

 and John Wells

John Wells (satirist)

John Wells was an English actor, writer and satirist, educated at Eastbourne College and St Edmund Hall, Oxford...

, and illustrated with sketches by George Worsley Adamson

George Worsley Adamson

George Worsley Adamson was a book illustrator, author and cartoonist who from 1931 held American and British dual citizenship....

 for the first five years, and subsequently by Brian Bagnall.

The series took the form of fortnightly letters to "Bill" by his friend and golfing partner "Denis". The letters were split equally between reactionary grumblings about the state of the country and vituperative comments on contemporary politics, with regular passing references to the goings-on of a fictional collection of acquaintainces and the consumption of a quite remarkable quantity of "electric soup"

Alcoholic beverage

An alcoholic beverage is a drink containing ethanol, commonly known as alcohol. Alcoholic beverages are divided into three general classes: beers, wines, and spirits. They are legally consumed in most countries, and over 100 countries have laws regulating their production, sale, and consumption...

. "Bill", whilst never identified as such in the series, was often taken as being Denis Thatcher's close friend Bill Deedes

Bill Deedes

William Francis Deedes, Baron Deedes, KBE, MC, PC, DL was a British Conservative Party politician, army officer and journalist; he is to date the only person in Britain to have been both a member of the Cabinet and the editor of a major daily newspaper, The Daily Telegraph.-Early life and...

; indeed, Deedes later titled his autobiography Dear Bill: a memoir.

The series ran throughout the Thatcher government, first appearing two weeks after Margaret Thatcher was elected. It spawned a number of annual editions of the collected letters, one for each year, and even a stage play, Anyone for Denis?, with creator John Wells playing the title role. A television adaptation by Thames Television

Thames Television

Thames Television was a licensee of the British ITV television network, covering London and parts of the surrounding counties on weekdays from 30 July 1968 until 31 December 1992....

 was broadcast in 1982.

The concept of writing satire from the point of view of a Prime Ministerial spouse was not new to the magazine, who had published Mrs Wilson's Diary (also a collaboration between Wells and Ingrams) along the same line during the Wilson

Harold Wilson

James Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, KG, OBE, FRS, FSS, PC was a British Labour Member of Parliament, Leader of the Labour Party. He was twice Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the 1960s and 1970s, winning four general elections, including a minority government after the...

 government. It allowed the writers wide rein to comment on the personal peculiarities of senior politicians without seeming overly absurd, and was presented in a context that was – whilst clearly fictional – quite plausible. The assumed characteristics of the subject – a conservative reactionary, a "buffer's buffer" surveying the world through the bottom of a glass and not liking it one inch – gave ample opportunity for a rich and identifiable style; the image of Denis portrayed in the letters – a gin-soaked half-witted layabout, whose sole activity was to try to escape the wrath of "the Boss" – was a popular one, and Denis Thatcher remained in the public imagination as a less gaffe-prone version of the Duke of Edinburgh

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh is the husband of Elizabeth II. He is the United Kingdom's longest-serving consort and the oldest serving spouse of a reigning British monarch....

 long after both the Thatcher government and the series itself had ended. The portrayal was not entirely negative; Denis Thatcher was portrayed as having a sharp and witty tongue, and a keen eye for events around him.

Whilst the letters may not have represented the real Denis Thatcher, they represented the Denis Thatcher their readers believed in. Philip Larkin described the letters as consolidating "an imaginative reality that is more convincing than the morning papers" in an Observer review, and John Wells once argued that he had done more than every Downing Street

Downing Street

Downing Street in London, England has for over two hundred years housed the official residences of two of the most senior British cabinet ministers: the First Lord of the Treasury, an office now synonymous with that of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and the Second Lord of the Treasury, an...

 publicist to endear the Thatchers to the British public. They played a major part in fashioning Denis Thatcher's popular public image.

Recently, Bill Deedes, along with the Thatchers' daughter Carol

Carol Thatcher

Carol Thatcher is a British journalist, author and media personality. She is the daughter of Margaret Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, a former British Prime Minister, and Sir Denis Thatcher, Bt....

, has argued that Denis himself played up to this image – by encouraging the portrayal of himself as a harmlessly incompetent buffoon, he could deflect any claims that he was manipulating government from "behind the throne".