The lady's not for swearing: BBC Thatcher drama causes obscenity row

Which is why a drama about her early years is causing deep offence before it is even screened.

The Long Walk To Finchley depicts the young Margaret voicing her anger at failing to be selected for a Parliamentary seat.

She screams: "F***ing establishment!" in frustration at what she sees is a conspiracy against her by the male-dominated world of politics.

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Writer Tony Saint is refusing to alter the script, even though the scene in question has yet to be filmed. A spokesman for the production company, Great Meadow, stressed that the film is "a personal interpretation of how she might have been, not a factual presentation of how she was".

But supporters of 81-year-old Lady Thatcher, whose path to the Premiership began when she became Tory MP for the North London constituency of Finchley in 1959, insist that she is being badly misrepresented.

Shadow Defence Secretary Liam Fox said the drama had gone beyond the accepted level of dramatic licence. "I think it's disgusting and very cheapening," he said.

"I think that it's rather sad that someone would want to portray her in such a way. It shows both a lack of taste and respect.

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"If you are dramatising something and you put words into someone's mouth that they would not have said and would find offensive it is bad. It shows a lack of understanding of who Margaret Thatcher is."

A source who still works close to the Iron Lady, who once famously declared that she was "not for turning", said: "I have never heard her swear in all the years I have worked for her.

"She is a female of that generation and they just didn't do it. It is almost certainly fabricated."

In the drama, 25-year-old Andrea Riseborough plays the young Margaret and Rory Kinnear, son of the comic actor Roy, portrays her husband Denis.

The then Margaret Roberts, who studied chemistry at Oxford, first unsuccessfully fought the safe Labour seat of Dartford, Kent, in 1950.

After unsuccessfully standing again in Dartford a year later, she was rejected by several Tory selection committees in other constituencies before winning Finchley.

The production spokesman added: 'There is no plan to change the script at this time. The BBC asked about the language of that scene and the writer said it was necessary so it stayed in.

"So little is known about Margaret Thatcher as a young woman straight out of Oxford that no one can say if this is right or wrong. It is a dramatic interpretation taken from the bare bones of the facts."