Natasha Kaplinsky, just a great friend of Tony Benn

Among Tony Benn’s many admirers was newsreader Natasha Kaplinsky, nearly 50 years Benn’s junior when she struck up an affectionate friendship with the widowed politician 10 years ago.

According to Benn’s diaries, their rapport resulted in the Daily Telegraph printing “a completely fabricated picture of Natasha in her beautiful ballgown and me in evening dress, saying it was a platonic relationship.

“So I rang her and said, ‘I hope it doesn’t embarrass you in any way but I have written a very angry letter to the editor of the Daily Telegraph saying how outrageous it was that he should suggest that it was a platonic friendship’. She laughed at that.”