Not much, really - a seashell of an ashtray resting on the counter of the powder room of the fourth-floor discotheque. Yes, First Lady Imelda Marcos had her own disco. When security guards weren’t looking, I slipped the ashtray into my pocket, repayment for my personal taxpayer share of all that misdirected US aid to the Philippines. I walked out with that Marcos memento in my coat pocket.

Thankfully, US first ladies generally seem to be cut from finer cloth than Imelda. And they are often prime-time figures at US presidential-nominating conventions, just as Theresa Heinz Kerry was a centre of attention in Boston this week. I can’t remember a convention where the wife of the presidential candidate or incumbent wasn’t somehow in the limelight.

At the 1980 Republican National Convention in Detroit, for example, when Ronald Reagan was nominated, the main suspense was who’d be his running mate (George H. W. Bush) and what high-end ensemble Nancy Reagan would wear. She was depicted as a Hollywood (“I’m ready for my close-up”) prima donna - unapproachable and imperious. Imagine the alacrity of the international news media when the future first lady on the second night of the convention fell off her chair and had to be saved from hitting the floor by the alert inner circle surrounding her. The otherwise prim Nancy drew more laughs from this slip than she wanted.

First lady-wise, the 1988 conventions were especially memorable. In the spotlight at the Republican gala in New Orleans was Barbara Pierce Bush - who will always be my favourite. Despite being born into wealth (her pa was publisher of famous women’s magazines), she was invariably sunny, irreverent and fervent about her pet causes, especially literacy. Another of her pet causes was her cocker spaniel, about whom she penned the best-seller Millie’s Book. She was also capable of treating her husband like a dog. Visiting the Bushes at their Kennebunkport, retreat one summer, my wife and I were invited to go river fishing with Bush senior and an aide. My wife -who prefers her fish packaged at fancy sushi bars, not flapping at the end of a bloody hook - declined. This was despite heavy lobbying from King George himself. Barbara, falling over with laughter, pulled Andrea aside and said: Now, don’t you give in to that bully. And Andrea didn’t. Barbara congratulated her for being the first person ever to refuse to go fishing with her husband.

My affection for Barbara Bush takes nothing away from my fondness for Kitty Dukakis, whose husband’s White House aspirations were blown away by Barbara’s husband’s superior 1988 campaign. In fact, I admire Kitty enormously for her heroic battle against the bottle, a campaign to which I once became an unintentional impediment. At a New Year’s Eve party, making the rounds with a bottle of champagne to top off everyone’s glass, I unthinkingly handed Kitty a glass of yummy bubbly. Like a hawk (though actually a dove), her husband - now a UCLA faculty colleague - swooped in to whisk the glass away, explaining to me later in a nice way that I was not to do that again or he’d personally kill me.

This 2004 Democratic Convention, though, is the first one, in recent memory, where all eyeballs are trained on not one, but two first and/or would-be first ladies. This suggests that the role of women in political conventions is starting to parallel the general rise of women in American politics.

The star, of course, is Hillary Clinton, who may have the highest IQ in the entire convention hall and is the first first lady to be a member of the US Senate. The other powerful figure under the microscope is John Kerry’s wife Teresa, who as the Heinz heiress may have more money than anyone in the hall. She is probably also the least verbally careful of anyone in the hall - certainly the least careful of the Kerrys.

An over-blown flap occurred earlier in the week when she told a pesky reporter from a conservative newspaper to bug off and ‘shove it’. This was elevated to a major PR boo-boo by the news media, which is still licking its lips, waiting for the next Heinz spill, as with Nancy’s more than two decades ago. Personally, I like this presumptive first lady: If I had her money, I probably wouldn’t care what I said, either. But though she’s loaded, she’s no Imelda Marcos. US first ladies are held to a proper high standard. Often, they manage to exceed them, even, as Hillary can certainly attest, under the most trying circumstances.

I still have the Imelda Marcos ashtray. I do not plan to return it.