MY ALARM WOKE ME early on Sunday, while I was engaged in perilous wingless flight over huge ocean rollers, and late for tea with the Queen. Only a dream, of course, but not the first time Her Majesty has joined me (in the most respectable way) in dreams.

How common is this? Speaking at a gathering of the Inner Wheel in Matlock yesterday I asked the audience whether the Queen had ever entered any of their dreams. Among 120 people, 7 per cent remembered such dreams. Has any other human being alive today so consistently appeared, over so many decades, in the dreams of the British? If one in ten of us occasionally experiences this, then the numbers would run into thousands every night.

Awaking as she sometimes must in the small hours, how strange for the Queen to reflect that at that very moment, in the still of the night, scores of people — people she will never know — are dreaming about her.

• I RECORDED this week, for ITV’s Central News, an interview about Margaret Thatcher and sleep. ITV was making a documentary about those who get by on just a few hours, and Lady Thatcher’s is the name that always comes up in conversation.

  By force of will, habit and autopilot, capable, driving personalities can keep a grip while not quite firing on all cylinders and perhaps not realising how tired they are. They get by; but they are not really flying.

  The legend is true that she would for long periods manage on only four or five hours sleep a night. I worked as a clerk for her in Opposition and saw her most days; and when I was a backbencher in her first and second governments, would rub shoulders with her often in the crowded Division lobbies during a 10pm vote.

  She always seemed on the ball. Her dress was impeccable, not a hair was out of place and her make-up was perfect. But I was able to look into her eyes, too, where real fatigue always shows. Often, and deep down, you could see she was absolutely exhausted. Everybody needs sleep. I think she burnt herself out.

• A NONSENSE is a nonsense, but there are only so many times one can say so without becoming a bore. On the BBC Sunday AM programme I discussed with Sarah Sands (whose interview with General Sir Richard Dannatt had caused such fuss) the Prime Minister’s nonsensical claim that he and the general were of one mind. I thought it outrageous for the general to continue as Tony Blair’s Chief of the General Staff. Sarah called me one of the “constitutionalists”, meaning (in the nicest way) one of the nerds.

  So has the shameless repetition of an obvious lie successfully “parked” this story, making bores of those unwilling to move on? I joined the Times debate at the Cheltenham Literary Festival later that day. Our topic was whether it is the media or politicians who set the agenda. Before an audience of thoughtful people I took heart. This is not a looking-glass world and things are not made true by command or by repetition. Neither journalists nor politicians set the agenda. The truth does.

  In Iraq, death sets the agenda. What can the Chief of the General Staff say to the widow of the next British soldier to die there? “Your husband did not die in vain”? But he has told the Daily Mail he does think soldiers are dying in vain. Next month, next year, still facing death in a war that their own chief calls futile, his forces’ pleasure at his public honesty last week will sour.

  I shall be a bore and keep saying so. As British troops hang about in mortal danger in the desert while Britain waits for Washington to give the orders to cut and run, we are in for bitter final chapter to this tale. And when Mr Blair next resumes his unctuous Commons condolences for each new fatality, how long before someone less gentlemanly than David Cameron asks the Prime Minister to consult his own CGS before insulting us again with the dabbed eye and the moistened handkerchief?

• MY MOTHER was on a plane on an overnight flight from Japan. She woke in the night and looked down the plane: row upon row of sleeping Japanese people, a great assembly of peaceful faces, blank in slumber.

  “They were all dreaming, I suppose,” said my mother, “and I thought ‘They must be dreaming in Japanese. Hundreds of people dreaming in Japanese. So clever!’”

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