There are many Maggie Thatchers, and which story we choose to tell says more about us than it does about her.

"I really wish," whispers my Northern Friend, watching the Grand Hotel explode into chunks of concrete on screen, "that they would stop making young Denis Thatcher so fanciable". On reflection, it may have been a mistake to go and see The Iron Lady, the ubiquitous Thatcher Biopic, in the company of seven anarchists who have partaken of fortifying cider before venturing into the Tottenham Court Road Odeon, but by the time the soaring theme-music starts to roll it's far, far too late.

The way in which we choose to tell the story of Margaret Thatcher will always be about more than one frail old lady losing her faculties in Belgravia. It's about the ideology that Thatcher represents, the free-market, anti-union, anti-state, pro-business fanaticism that divided the nation in the 1980s and is coming to divide it again. The opening shot, in which Meryl-Streep-as-Thatcher's wizened, liver-spotted paw reaches up to snatch an pint of milk from a shelf along with the inevitable Oscar -- a cheeky reference to the old Left nickname "Thatcher, Milk Snatcher'" for the benefit of those readers who have mentally erased the 1980s -- does not soften the blow of what is to come.

Bouffant battleaxe

Over the next one hundred and three minutes, I watch my friends sink into fetal positions in the snap-up seats as history is reshot with soaring trumpets in the background. In this nostalgic and mostly imaginary recent British past, we are a nation of strong, self-reliant businessfolks who don't believe in welfare. Thatcher was a feminist hero who refused to "die washing up a teacup". Unions are socially irresponsible throwbacks memorable only for allowing the rubbish to pile up in the street in the bad old days of the 1970s, before Maggie took power in an orgy of Union flags descending in slow motion from the ceilings of memory. War and spending cuts can save Britain, and the unemployed and dispossessed are snarling, ungrateful animals, thumping and screaming outside the darkened windows of a ministerial car.

I start peeking through my fingers when Maggie has her Next Top Model-esque makeover montage, transforming from matronly back-bencher to power-dressing, bouffant-haired battleaxe, and being strapped into a peacock-blue gown with a plunging neckline whilst she lectures Geoffrey Howe about the importance of public sector cuts. A couple of what look, from their trendy open-neck shirts and slick hair, to be young Conservatives in front of us are practically wetting themselves with excitement. "Oh god. The gay Tories are going to love this," the friend to my left says, a sentiment that might perhaps have caused the real Thatcher to tighten her grip on her handbag.

To my left, Anarcha-Feminist Friend has stopped rocking in her chair and started scribbling frantically in a notebook. "I've worked out how we can get through this," she says, "It's not a panegyric, it's actually a really clever story with an unreliable narrator, about a dotty old lady editing out all the bad bits of her legacy and remembering herself as a hero." Then we have to sit through the scene where Denis Thatcher literally ascends into heaven, leaving Maggie alone at the top of the stairs. "Jump," she whispers, too loudly. The young Conservatives glare at us.

My Northern Friend is supposed to be quitting smoking. Outside the Odeon, with the patriotic overture still ringing in our ears, he's sucking down his second Pall Mall in a row and shaking with rage. "I don't care if it's a hagiography, you can't make a film about Thatcher without talking about the Miners' Strike," he says. "They hardly even mentioned it." The young Conservatives stumble past us and out into the winter chill with the glazed, slightly sheepish expressions of punters leaving a strip-club. There are many Maggie Thatchers, and which story we choose to tell says more about us than it does about her. Right now, the official story is a nostalgic flag-waver about how war, markets and judiciously chosen twinsets saved Britain- but there are, and will always be, those who remember it differently.