A mum has claimed she found the face of Margaret Thatcher seared into her ironing board – but we’re not convinced.

Karen Schmit, 63, or Norwich, said she hadn’t noticed the resemblance to the ‘Iron Lady’ when she posted the board for sale on Facebook, but commenters were quick to notice the similarity.

Part-time teaching assistant Karen said she had initially hoped to fetch £5 for the household staple, but now plans to keep it.

The now viral ironing board belonged to her late mum – who would have ‘loved’ Thatcher’s face ‘appearing’ on it, she said.

Karen explained: ‘I was clearing stuff out. I don’t like anything to go to waste. Then people said they could see a face in it.

‘One person said the Queen – then the Thatcher comments started coming through. People said it was the Iron Lady!’

But not everyone is convinced – and some have said it’s photoshopped.

Martin Smith quipped: ‘The ‘Ironing Lady’?’

Dr Deepayan Bhowmik, senior lecturer in data science at Newcastle University, told Metro.co.uk that two things are possible with the board.

He said: ‘The first is that a hard, tensile structure was behind the ironing board cover and that resulted in the “image” – but I think that’s unlikely.

‘It’s more likely someone created the image using software tools, which is relatively easy to do.

‘It might be the case here that they’ve used image fusion techniques, available on many standard editing software programs such as Photoshop.

‘Alternatively, it could have been created using a generative AI model for image inpainting.’

Thatcher, who died in 2013, was dubbed the Iron Lady over her no-nonsense leadership style and politics.

In her 11 years as the head of the country, Mrs Thatcher was a divisive figure, but has continued to be one of the most recognisable leaders of the 20th century.

Mum-of-one Karen said the ironing board was ‘a bit of fun – a bit of nonsense’, but was less keen on Thatcher as a prime minister.

Karen added: ‘She wasn’t for me.’

Earlier this year, a couple shared a photo of a towel they believed to show the face of a rock ‘n’ roll icon while on vacation in Skiathos, Greece.

Dawn and Nigel Dandy had hung up a towel to dry after sunbathing when they noticed what appeared to be the face of Elvis Presley outlined in the fabric.

Mrs Dandy added: ‘‘It was on the day of the anniversary of his death – it made it quite special really.’

Source:
courtesy of METRO

by Sarah Hooper

If you have any stories or news that you would like to share with the global online community, please feel free to share it with us by contacting us directly at [email protected]