THROUGHOUT history there have been a number of people you wouldn't particularly want to share a lift with.

When the door slides back on the first floor, it'd be a heart stopping moment if Count Dracula stepped in. Likewise Hannibal Lecter.

During the 1970s, one man put the fear of God up more people than all the inmates of San Quintin combined.

Idi Amin Dada, president of Uganda from 1971 until 1979, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea, and Conqueror of the British Empire in General and Uganda in Particular, oversaw a rule of terror so brutal that in those eight years an estimated 500,000 of the population were killed.

Rows and rows of his political opponents were ordered to lie face down on the ground. Soldiers then moved along the lines of quivering figures smashing the backs of their heads with sledgehammers. Just like knocking in tent pegs.

He came to power on January 25, 1971, by leading a military coup while Ugandan president Milton Obote was out of the country at a Commonwealth summit in Singapore.

As events unfolded, the British ex-pats working in the Ugandan capital Kampala were advised to stay at home.

However, the following day, they were told it was safe to return to work and in her fresh white blouse, smart dark skirt and high heeled shoes, Amy Wooltorton cut a crisp, slim figure as she made her way across town to the Parliament buildings, where she was employed in the president's office preparing papers for the Cabinet.

Crossing the foyer, Amy arrived at the entrance to the lift and pressed the button. The gates clattered back and she stepped inside, pressing the button for the fourth floor to take her up to her office.

Then she turned and saw a large, man in full military uniform burst through the entrance doors to the building and hurry towards the lift.

He stepped inside just before the gates closed. It was Idi Amin.

"Of course, I recognised him immediately," said Amy. "He was in his full uniform and even carried his stick beneath his arm. We had heard about the coup on South African radio and I knew I was standing there in a lift, just the two of us, with the man who had led it.

"The doors closed and it began to rise. I didn't know what to do or whether I should say something. He didn't say a word. He was a big man, but not as fat as he became later on. Thinking quickly, I said: Good morning, your Excellency'.

"He looked me up and down and said in his deep voice: Good morning'. That was all.

"Then the lift arrived at the fourth floor and I got out. He went on to the fifth floor where the presidential suites were and walked straight into Obote's office.

"The takeover was as swift as that. Eventually all his own men were moved on to the fifth floor and we used to see them going in and out of the building every day."

It is not easy to recall now - especially considering the horrors that were soon to become associated with Amin's rule of terror - that he was initially welcomed both by his own countrymen and most of the international community.

He freed many political prisoners of Obote's regime and disbanded the secret police, the General Service Unit. The trouble was, he replaced them with a much greater fear. Amin was paranoid - with some due cause it must be said - of a coup against him and he soon came to trust no one. His mood could change in an instant, from affability to extreme brutality.

He would snuff out a life like a smoker would stub out a cigarette.

His army engaged in theft and violence, especially against the Asian community, with impunity and his own secret police were everywhere, listening and watching.

"It was 21 miles from Kampala to Entebbe and there were eight road blocks along the way, all manned by armed soldiers.

"Sometimes they couldn't be bothered to get up out of their chairs and just waved us on. Other times they would be very intimidating."

It wasn't long before rumours of the bloody atrocities ordered by Amin began to circulate freely. Of men being bludgeoned to death with sledgehammers, fed to crocodiles or thrown out of planes.

"We heard some terrible stories and saw some terrible things," said Amy. "As soon as I could, I got out."

Amy now lives in Worcester and a copy of the book The Last King Of Scotland, one of the bizarre titles Idi Amin conferred on himself, lay on the coffee table of her neat lounge.

Various pages of it had been marked and I asked what she thought of it. "It all seems a bit mixed up to me," came the reply.

Mind you, trouble and Amy Wooltorton seem to have been constant bedmates over the years. Before Africa, she had been in British New Guinea where she worked during the civil unrest that eventually led to an independent Papua New Guinea in the mid 1970s.

After Uganda, Amy's administrative and secretarial skills were transferred to Iran, where opposition to the Shah's rule resulted in Ayatollah Khomeini seizing power in 1979. "Wherever I went, there seemed to be some sort of revolution," she laughed.