A FORMER politician made an unusual last request prior to her death last year...asking to be immortalised as the topless figurehead on the replica of a famous 19th century ship.

Teresa Gorman, Tory MP for Billericay from 1987 until 2001, died in August at the age of 83 with a personal fortune of £2.8million, but failed to leave a will.

Her second husband Peter Clarke, who will inherit the money, has revealed he will spend large parts of the fortune on "several projects that animated her imagination".

Biology graduate Ms Gorman was known as a "profound fan" of Charles Darwin and had previously donated £100,000 in 2011 to a project to build a replica of the naturalist's ship HMS Beagle, which he used for scientific voyages in the 1830s.

Prior to her death, the former MP told her husband she wanted to make a further significant donation to the HMS Beagle Project charity, which is spearheading the creation of the replica.

In return for the donation, the charity has agreed the ship's mermaid figurehead will be modelled on Ms Gorman.

Mr Clarke, 69, said she had asked that the figurehead should have "slightly enhanced bosoms".

He added: "Mermaids were traditionally bare-chested, of course. Teresa has nothing to be ashamed about. The figurehead is a marine talisman. I insist that it be bare-chested."

Ms Gorman had previously commissioned a smaller scale model of the HMS Beagle, also featuring herself as the figurehead, which took pride of place in her Orsett farmhouse.

The Tory was renowned as a prominent member of a group of party rebels who nearly brought down John Major’s government in the Nineties in a dispute over the European Union treaty.

She was one of a group of anti-Euro Conservatives, famously dubbed “bastards” by Mr Major for refusing to back the Maastricht Treaty in 1994.

Her role in the rebellion led to the Conservatives temporarily withdrawing the party whip.

As well as her political career, she was a successful entrepreneur, who was involved in property development and selling teaching aids.

Friend and former Rochford and Southend East MP Sir Teddy Taylor, who was another of the so-called “Maastricht rebels”, described Ms Gorman as a "good, sincere person".

He added: "She was one of the ‘old school’ who was more concerned with what was right and wrong, rather than party politics, and that is how she will be remembered."