‘How old are you? 12?’ The day I got ticked off by fiery Glenda Jackson

She wasn’t afraid to be angry in a world that too often expects women to be obliging and demure, says Sue Gyford

Glenda Jackson on the campaign trail with Labour’s then prime minister, Gordon Brown, in 2010 (Getty Images)

Hampstead, 2003. New Labour reigned, opposition to the Iraq war raged, and Glenda Jackson was MP for Hampstead & Highgate.

In the greyest corner of the neighbourhood, I was wedged into a scruffy office in Swiss Cottage, chief reporter at the Ham & High – the local newspaper for a part of London so stuffed with big-hitters that it had Michael Foot knocking out the book reviews.

It was a novelty to scrawl a couple of “famous” MPs’ numbers into my contacts book after 18 months covering Islington, a borough where Granita was still wedged firmly on Upper Street, but Blair’s departure for Downing Street was already ebbing into memory, and a little-known, lifelong backbencher (as I was convinced at the time) called Jeremy Corbyn was MP.