Margaret Thatcher famously used the sketch in a speech at the Conservative Party Conference in 1990, referring to the Liberal Democrats and their symbol being a dove, before ending the speech by commenting, "And now for something completely different." In 1998, "The Sun" ran the front-page headline "This party is no more...it has ceased to be...this is an EX-party" for an article about a Conservative Party conference. According to her former political secretary John Whittingdale, Thatcher did not understand why the joke was funny and had to be persuaded that it would work.