Mark Thatcher, set to plead guilty in a plea bargaining deal to charges of bankrolling an alleged African coup plot, first hit the headlines in 1982 when he disappeared in the Sahara desert for six days during the Paris to Dakar car rally.
That incident placed him in the British mind as one of the few who ever made his mother, British former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, show any personal feelings in public.
Thatcher (51) was set on Thursday to plead guilty in a Cape Town court to charges of bankrolling an alleged putsch plot in the west African state of Equatorial Guinea.
The businessman was arrested on August 25 last year at his Cape Town mansion on charges of contributing $275 000 to help finance the suspected plot to overthrow longtime Equatorial Guinea leader Teodoro Obiang Nguema.
But it was in January 1982, as a somewhat wayward 28-year-old with a taste for motor racing, that Thatcher first made news when he disappeared in the Sahara.
Facing the press then to talk about her missing son whom she feared might have been kidnapped, the famously tough Iron Lady shed a tear before the television cameras in what was then an unprecedented show of personal emotion.
As it turned out, Thatcher and his co-driver had simply broken an axle on their Peugeot 504 and were unharmed when spotter planes eventually located them waiting in their broken-down car.
Up until his arrest by South African police last year, the younger Thatcher’s desert adventure was his chief claim to fame.
Otherwise, he had managed to acquire the reputation of being a generally amiable if slightly blundering figure who had managed to make himself wealthy despite a distinctly mixed record in business.
Mark Thatcher and his twin sister, Carol, were born on August 15, 1953, the only children of the future prime minister, then working as a lawyer before entering politics, and her husband, businessman Denis Thatcher.
Educated at Harrow, the exclusive English school once attended by Winston Churchill, Mark Thatcher is viewed as less diligent — and, perhaps, less intelligent — than his twin, who has carved out a solid career for herself as a journalist and author.
Sir Mark Thatcher, as he now known after inheriting his late father’s baronetcy in 2003, has been accused in the past of using the family name to build his fortune, estimated at 60-million pounds ($120-million).
In 1977, with cars his passion, the budding businessman launched his own car racing stable, Mark Thatcher Racing, which later went bust. Later he worked in the United States for the British sports car company Lotus.
There was public criticism over his invovlement in obtaining a construction contract in Oman for Cementation, a British civil engineering firm, just after a visit there in 1986 by his mother there, obliging the Iron Lady to make a statement to the House of Commons.
In February 1987, Thatcher married Texan heiress Diane Burgdorf, with whom he has had two children, and relocated to the United States for some years, becoming involved in a series of business ventures with mixed success.
In late 1995 after reportedly losing million of pounds in business deals, Thatcher and his wife decided to make a new life in South Africa, buying a plush, six-bedroom house in the exclusive Cape Town suburb of Constantia.
However even there, trouble was not far behind.
Within a few months of his arrival, his now ex-premier mother flew into the country amid reports that he was having trouble renewing his South African visa.
Subsequently, Thatcher lived a generally quiet and low-profile life in Cape Town, where his near-neighbours included Earl Spencer, elder brother of the late Princess Diana. – Sapa-AFP