Americans keep odd things up on the mantelpiece, or in the fridge: Dad's ashes in a biscuit tin or, in Barbara Bush's case, the foetus she miscarried, stored in a mason jar. As her eldest son disclosed this week on national TV, she then handed it to the teenaged George Jr, to take to the hospital. "George, honey, could you hold this while I get the car keys."

"What is it, mom?"

I interviewed Barbara Bush in 1979, when George Sr was vainly challenging Ronald Reagan for the Republican nomination. This was a time when her image-handlers were trying to get round the fact that with her defiant white hair she looked like her husband's mother. They sold her as "the Silver Fox" - America's matriarch.

She was horrible. Bitterness seeped out of her like blood from an underdone ribeye.

Every banal question elicited a hiss of derision and contempt.

Barbara Bush: Horrible Mother To A Tacky Family