Miguel had been one of the leaders of the resistance to the right-wing military regimes that had followed the overthrow of the weak civilian government of President Arturo Illia in 1966, and he was handsomely rewarded by the triumphant Peronists. By that time the UOM had more than half a million members, and Miguel got what he wanted for his people just by picking up the phone. He was also credited with behind-the-scenes influence in the nomination of deputies and ministers: some of his prot?s are still powerful figures in Peronist politics.Lorenzo’s well-honed political skills came in useful when the Peronists, in the grotesque shape of Per? widow, Mar?Estela (Isabelita) Mart?z, were ejected once again by the military, in 1976, and the most ruthless dictatorship the country has known set about eliminating all traces of opposition. Miguel had remained faithful to Isabelita to the end, and was a target for the army hit-squads that roamed the streets of Buenos Aires in the aftermath of her departure.But his life was saved by his relationship with the navy representative on the ruling junta, Admiral Emilio Massera, whose promotion to navy chief he had helped to engineer three years earlier, with a word in Per? ear. Miguel spent four years in a prison ship, where one of his fellow detainees was Carlos Menem.The return of democratic government following the Falklands d?cle in 1982 was the beginning of the end for Miguel: he was among the leaders of the Peronist party who took the blame for its electoral defeat at the hands of the Radicals. But he remained an influential figure in union politics and, along with another Peronist union boss, Sa?baldini, he engineered 13 crippling general strikes against President Ra?lfons?s government.But when the Peronist Carlos Menem was elected in his place, in 1989, there was no reward for Miguel. On the contrary, Menem’s free-market policies, orchestrated by his economy minister, Domingo Cavallo, spelt the end of protection for the industries that had generated Miguel’s power base, and he and his colleagues no longer had the ear of those in power.

By the late-1990s, UOM membership had declined to little more than 100,000, the old strategy of flexing union muscle to secure generous wage settlements no longer worked, and the union-controlled health and pension funds that had once provided an unlimited source of patronage and largesse for Miguel were broke.Lorenzo Miguel was born in 1927. He first tried his hand as a boxer but he hung up his gloves after taking a particularly savage pounding in the ring, and his mother persuaded him to find a less precarious job as an unskilled factory worker in Buenos Aires. It proved to be a good move, as Miguel quickly climbed the union hierarchy.By 1969 he was UOM treasurer, and in the following year he replaced his mentor, Augusto Vandor, as general secretary. Vandor, who had been flirting with the military government of the day, was assassinated at UOM headquarters. Several other rivals for the top union job also came to a sticky end, and Miguel rapidly consolidated the grip on the UOM that never slackened for three decades.Colin Harding. Meri Wilson, singer: born 1949; married; died Americus, Georgia 28 December 2002.

Meri Wilson, like many performers, discovered that having a hit record could be a two-edged sword. In 1977, she received a gold disc for “Telephone Man”, but in the years that followed, the public was reluctant to buy anything else from her. The engineer says, “Hey baby, I’m your telephone man, / Show me where you want it and I’ll put it where I can”, and Wilson, to an an infectious “do lolly, lolly, chicka-do, chicka-do” rhythm, concludes, “My fingers did the walking on the telephone man.” Like most novelties, it was loved and detested in equal measure, but it has remained a popular oldie and frequently appears on compilation albums.Wilson was born in 1949 to a US Air Force officer serving in Japan, but she spent her childhood in Marietta, Georgia. Her father played the trumpet and her mother the piano, and Wilson herself learnt the piano, cello and flute.