Sticking it to The Man

We posted a while ago about the legal problems of Mark Thatcher and the weird resemblance thereof to Dubya. "Sir" Mark copped a plea in South Africa to aiding mercenaries seeking to overthrow the regime in Equatorial Guinea, but his new problem is getting back to his family in, of all places, Texas. His criminal conviction may bar him getting a US visa.

It seems that "Sir" Mark was hoping to use his personal charm, not to mention his surname, to sort out this issue in a meeting at the US Embassy in Mayfair on Monday, but a higher force intervened:

Sir Mark, who was advised that his best hope lay in a face-to-face meeting with officials at the US Embassy in London, was frustrated yesterday because the building in Grosvenor Square was shut because of the American national holiday in honour of Martin Luther King.

Pissing off a Thatcher. Chalk up another one to the great man.

UPDATE Jan 24: the tempting linkage between visas for "Sir" Mark and the Gerry Adams being drawn.