ANN Widdecombe is someone I’ve always found fascinating, which is odd as I am probably one of the many who has spent the day reacting to her death repeatedly thinking the sentence ‘I didn’t agree with a lot of her views, but…’

Let me be clear – I really don’t. But I guess I’m becoming increasingly old fashioned because I still live by the idea that you don’t have to hate everyone you do not agree on everything with. I like to think if I had ever met her, I’d have enjoyed the debate about the dichotomy of views between us.

Trying to understand her appeal has been fresh in my head after the news of her death, but then something that my father has been saying a lot recently came into my head – he likes to muse about how communities don’t have the ‘characters’ like they used to.

Whatever you thought of the late Miss Widdecombe, she was certainly a character, and it was a skill that saw her revered far beyond the status that a relatively minor MP in terms of their climb up the greasy pole of the House of Commons.

There’s something about the British psyche that draws us to the older, tough woman character types who are often described as ‘battle axes’ – whether its people like Ann Widdecombe or Margaret Thatcher in Politics, or characters in TV soaps such as Blanche Hunt, Ena Sharples or Annie Sugden.

Perhaps for some, she reminded us a bit of an older Nan or an Aunt.

I think there is also an element of her representing a type of politics we badly miss but perhaps don’t crave enough – one where you know exactly where someone stands.

In a time where spin is rife and you never really know where a politician stands, you always knew where Ann Widdecombe stood on a subject because firstly, she’d have told you in that shrill, distinctive voice of hers, and secondly, she wasn’t exactly the type of person to change her mind.

Although, I did wholeheartedly share her views when it comes to animals – particularly cats.

A lot of her views stem from a hardened religious and Conservative conviction, with this also seeing her convert to Catholicism in 1993.

Beyond the frightening image she had made for herself in the eyes of those who crossed her, I am also aware that there was another side to Miss Widdecombe. Some of that was obvious on television, such as her incredibly amusing stint on Strictly Come Dancing or the time she appeared on Louis Theroux.

I also know of an anecdote from someone who knew her which fits with the many observations you will have seen since her passing – yes, her views on some things were pretty extreme, but she didn’t go out of her way to actively hate anyone who wasn’t like her.

It concerns an old college friend of mine who has become a celebrity interviewer. Both before he became established as that well known interviewer and after, he’s someone who became friends with Ann after her multiple appearances on his shows in different guises.

When she made her most recent appearance, I remember seeing a lot of nastiness coming his way on social media demanding to know why he was platforming such a horrid, homophobic person.

His response was a very simple one. If Ann Widdecombe was everything, they were saying she was, why was she friends with a gay person?

She might not have agreed with changing the law to let him marry, but she didn’t hate him because he wasn’t like her.

That for me was the moment I first began to wonder if there was more to the person I once thought many years ago was just a ‘horrid old bat’.

But it’s undeniable that we’re in a world where a few more political figures who are unafraid to speak their mind and tell you why they believe what they do coherently and respectfully, instead of the shrill parroting of quotes, slogans and active hatred to anything that isn’t like us of the world we currently live in.

May she rest in peace and may comfort be brought to her loved ones.