Cherie to cash-in on the lecture circuit

But his wife Cherie, it seems, just can't wait that long.

Next month, before her husband quits as Prime Minister, Mrs Blair will embark on yet another lucrative lecture tour of North America, joining a celebrity-studded speaking circuit alongside the likes of Goldie Hawn, Shirley Maclaine and Jamie Lee Curtis.

She will earn up to £90,000 for the three dates in San Jose on June 3, Denver on June 4 and Toronto on June 12.

Mrs Blair has faced constant criticism for 'cashing in' on her husband's name with her money-spinning lectures, for which she has been billed in the past as 'First Lady of Great Britain'.

She has been steadfastly unrepentant, however, and has abandoned her ambitions of becoming a High Court judge in order to pursue the far more glamorous - and better-paid - life of an international after-dinner speaker.

Mrs Blair is a client of the New York-based Harry Walker Agency, whose star speakers-for-hire include President Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Kofi Annan. Through the agency she has been hired to speak as part of the Unique Lives & Experiences lecture circuit, which promotes itself as 'North America's foremost women's lecture series'.

The Hollywood stars whose pictures appear alongside Mrs Blair on the company's website will speak at the same venues but on different dates. All three events, where ticket prices range from £18 to £57, are expected to be a sell-out, with audiences of up to 3,000 people.

The publicity material for the tour, in which she is billed as 'Cherie Booth QC, Human Rights Lawyer, wife of Tony Blair', describes her as a 'wonder woman' and quotes the Prime Minister as saying she is an 'extraordinary woman'.

Mrs Blair, who has scaled back her legal work in recent years, has already earned hundreds of thousands of pounds from her public speaking, and is likely to take on as many speaking dates as she can when Mr Blair leaves Downing Street next month, knowing that bookings will begin to dry up the longer her husband has been out of power.

Mr Blair will be able to command fees of up to £125,000 per event when he begins his own public speaking career later this year, and could earn up to £40million from lectures, directorships and his memoirs in his first five years out of office.

In the meantime the Blairs have had to find up to £20,000 per month to keep up the mortgage repayments on their five properties - a £3.65m townhouse and an £800,000 mews house in London, two flats in Bristol and their constituency home in Sedgefield.