BARONESS Thatcher was making a remarkable recovery from illness last night, as she gained sustenance from Britain’s collective trauma.

Doctors now believe the former prime minister is some form of psychic vampire.

Consultant Dr Tom Logan said: “She was teetering on the edge of oblivion, so close that I was about to give her grapes and Lucozade to the nurses.

“I was sitting on the end of her bed watching News 24. It was a bleak stream of misery involving cuts, impending snow and a freak accident involving a truckload of otters and a helicopter, when something remarkable happened.

“The blue veins beneath her thin skin began to pulse with energy. Her boney hand clutched the air, her dull, grey fingernail nails once again bright and sharp as a row of buzzards’ beaks. One basilisk eye opened and regarded me with blank contempt.

“She was feeding.”

He added: “When I flipped over to Sky, there was footage of some smiling miners embracing in the sunshine. Her hand fell back onto the bed as if someone had cut the strings on a marionette.”

Experts believe it will take around three to five days of concentrated misery to restore the Baroness to fighting strength.

Professor Henry Brubaker of the Institute for Studies said: “We’ve all seen Halloween. It’s not like you get up and leave the cinema the first time Michael Myers gets set on fire.”

He added: “Perhaps it’s cruel to say such things about an old woman who’s almost as human as the rest of us, but if there’s no such thing as society then I suppose it doesn’t matter what society thinks. So bollocks to her.

“On the plus side at least she didn’t play head-tennis with Kevin Keegan or take part in some shitty Comic Relief sketch in a bid to make me think she was cool.

“He was such a fucker, wasn’t he?”