SPEAKING FOR MYSELF: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
By Cherie Blair
KEY POINTS:
Oh, Cherie! As the journalist from the 2003 "Lippygate" story, I was there when Cherie Blair let in Marie Claire (myself and photographer Jane Hodson) to observe her having her lipstick applied by the "Juicy Couture Rasputin", Carole Caplin, on the PM's bed.
At the time, I found Cherie "flawed, shrill, a charm-free zone", as well as "weird and inappropriate" (at one point clutching my arm in the back of a car and roaring show tunes into my face).
Most of all, I saw Cherie as "wrenchingly innocent" when dealing with journalists - the "ultimate New Labour Icarus free-falling from grace under a suddenly hostile media sun". Well, free-falling is one thing - five years later, with Speaking for Myself, Cherie Blair/Booth/whatever appears finally to have landed, and with quite a splat.
After the heavy-duty filleting of the newspaper serialisations, one hopes for her sake that Cherie got the rumoured lucrative deals as, quite frankly, once they'd finished taking out the "good bits", there was little of consequence left.
Saying that, here it is - all the New Labour gossip, as well as observations on such international figures as George W. Bush ("Nice" apparently, but not as "nice" as his wife), Princess Diana (also "nice") and Bill Clinton (depicted here ogling Carole Caplin in her yoga leotard).
Everything from how Gordon Brown, in his haste to become PM, actually prolonged Blair's tenure, to Iraq (Tony's crises of conscience) as well as the 'sexed-up dossier' and the suicide of scientist David Kelly, which plunges the PM into despair.
Luckily, Cherie is there to whisper supportively into her husband's ear: "You are a good man. And God knows your motives are pure, even if the consequences are not as you hoped."
This entire conversation, according to Cherie, occurred in Beijing, in front of hundreds of international press. Why don't we believe her?
Then of course there is the "sex stuff", including every detail of Blair child Leo's arrival into the world, bar an actual photograph of the sperm penetrating the ovum. There's the now-infamous "contraceptive equipment", which, bearing in mind Cherie's Catholicism, conjures some kind of tortuous chastity device. Most chillingly, all that stuff about her and young Tony "getting to know each other" on the double-decker bus, and "even better" by the next morning.
What is so disturbing is not just that Cherie, a top-ranking barrister in her 50s, clearly believes she has achieved classy Old Hollywood-esque, one-foot-on-the-floor subtlety with this coy rubbish but, presumably, Tony thinks so too.
Let us not forget Tony Blair vetted this book and thus approved references to the "smell of his skin", "his strong young body" and "his hair [curling] down over his collar in a way that made me want to twist it around my fingers". Any other ex-PM in British history would have wanted to twist his wife by the neck for such cringeworthy outpourings.
The same applies to Cherie's seeming Tourette's about money. It is one thing to blurt out something silly and regret it (all those gaffes Cherie refers to), quite another to write it down and then keep it in throughout the publishing process.
Even more so now, with the Blairs' recent purchase of Sir John Gielgud's former country mansion, it is completely bemusing, even sickening, to read about Cherie's bratty raging at Brown stopping them having a salary increase or her "poor moi" whingeing at having to pay a mortgage the size of a mountain (for a house of equal size). She even, at one point, refuses to pay her own airfare for a charitable cause, in such a way that she clearly feels completely in the right.
All of this makes Cherie look stupid. The fact that, throughout the book, Cherie blames her financial anxieties on her meagre upbringing somehow makes it worse.
What ends up rankling is Cherie's lack of humour and self-awareness about money. Just as unattractive is the constant sulky point-scoring (Brown, Campbell, Princess Margaret and Carole Caplin are among those who get belated raspberries). Then there are Cherie's attempts disingenuously to place herself in an innocent, beleaguered light, despite all the evidence to the contrary, regarding various scandals she was at the centre of.
All of which is only relevant because you then start wondering what else Cherie "mis-remembers", as her old pal Hillary might say.
In the end, this book makes you feel about Cherie as I did the day I met her - confused and turned off. Indeed, for all the fun to be had with the gossipy "guess what!" tone (all giving credence to the theory that Cherie rushed this out to capitalise on Brown's woes), this was an opportunity missed.
The truth is, Cherie Blair has had an astonishing journey from Liverpool to No 10, in her career, her charity work and her "marriage of equals with Blair".
A wifely, political diary-like account might have been interesting.
What Cherie should realise is that despite all her "goldfish bowl" whining, she is the only No 10 spouse to have screwed it all up so badly. Even Margaret Thatcher's spouse, Denis, did a better job and he was supposed to be drunk.
Reading Speaking for Myself, makes you wonder whether he would have been better off with Denis.
- OBSERVER
