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Cherie-bashing is the new national sport, she having replaced Heather Mills as the woman of whom it is de rigueur to disapprove. What enjoyable superiority it affords to bemoan her outbreak of Tourette's on life with Tony, accidental conceptions and how annoying her husband's colleagues were.
I rather like Mrs Blair's book because she does not self-censor, and the day-to-day texture of life around power is all there, even if she ducks her High Noon with Gordon Brown. (To judge by her ferocity on other matters, that would be quite something.) "You just couldn't resist it, could you?" despairs Tony when she shouts to photographers, "I won't miss you!" on her way out of No 10.
That's the point. The best witnesses are often limited, narcissistic and defy the advice of sensible people not to reveal absolutely everything. Mrs Blair just lets it all hang out. She is one of those people you happen upon at long wedding lunches who are prepared to tell you all, from the role of the cold nights in Balmoral in Leo's conception to a passionate reliance on André the hairdresser.
My colleague David Sexton in his review of the book took a dim view of such hairdresser-philia. Yet her stream of consciousness is shared by a lot of women just too uptight or self-aware to admit it. Frankly, I would love an André in my life to be fiercely loyal - "How dare you speak to Cherie like that?" - and keep up the 24-hour root lift.
One of the reasons she is a subject of enduring fascination is that her vices and quirks are widely shared among working women. She is disarmingly frank about an ardent desire to make money, combined with a ceaseless fretting about the state of the bank accounts and a desire to buy expensive houses. Yep, I get that. As for not liking her bottom and her fingers: well, who does, really?
Men don't like this book because it contains everything that irritates them about the minutiae of women's lives. Women don't like it because there is a bit of Cherie in most of us and a smidgen of envy too. She might be a bit barking,but she has risen at the Bar, had four children, married the longest-serving Labour prime minister and gets paid (a lot) for talking about it all.
Imagine if she had taken the sober advice and written the memoirs expected of her. It would either be a Norma Major-style potter around the gardens of Chequers or, worse, one of those pious, redacted Hillary Clinton-esque tomes no one reads.
Mrs Blair may be nuts to have told us quite so much, but give me her entertaining ramble through the undergrowth of Downing Street over the evasions of the sensible crowd any day.
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I really like you! Yours is the first sane critique on 'the book' I have read. I, too, enjoyed all those human snippets. The sad Cherie haters are having a field day; August 12th has arrived early, and she is the target. She wont mind; the BBC has made it book of the week, and all those pious hypocrites have ensured it gets maximum publicity. It will be a No.1 best seller without a doubt. Congrats, Cherie. Don't ever let those green-eyed b......s grind you down.
- Val Daniels, Mijas Costa. Spain
