Linda McDougall: Cherie, the perfect life of Mrs Blair

BY ELIZABETH JONES

"I started life as the daughter of someone, now I am the wife of someone, and I'll probably end up as the mother of someone," said Cherie Blair wistfully in 1994 on the day her husband Tony was chosen as leader of the British Labour Party.

Cherie Blair (nee Booth) QC is the first wife of a British Prime Minister to be a working mother.

In 1997 she moved into No 10 Downing St with her husband and three children, Euan, Nicky and Kathryn (the first children to have lived there for decades), and has combined her roles as first lady and mother with her work as a leading barrister.

It all seems an impossible task to Linda McDougall, the wife of Labour MP Austin Mitchell, and a journalist and television producer.

She was so intrigued by "superwoman" Blair, she set out to find the "real" person, the woman so private she did not want her biography written, and who asked her friends not to cooperate with it.

Blair certainly started her life as "the daughter of someone" - the actor Tony Booth, best known for his role as Alf Garnett's son-in-law in Till Death Us Do Part.

A wife and two daughters were such an unwanted encumberance to Booth he sent them to live with his devout Catholic parents in Liverpool while he continued his "crumpeteering" until he much later married Pat Phoenix (better known as Elsie Tanner in Coronation Street) in the 1980s.

The poor, working-class girl from Liverpool was the exact opposite to her womanising father.

Blair was a "natural swot" who coped with her famous father's reputation by "steadfastly ignoring him and getting on with her own life".

She won a scholarship to enter university and chose her profession on the advice of a boyfriend's mother, who said: "You're very good at debating: why don't you try the law?"

In 1976 when applying for another scholarship for further study she sat in alphabetical order next to Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, a Protestant, middle-class, public school-educated Oxford graduate, but they didn't really notice each other until they were offered pupillage at the same chambers.

And the rest, as they say, is history: she became "the wife of someone".

Despite the ironic title, and McDougall's admission of coolness between herself and Blair, this is a well-researched and even-handed biography.

McDougall investigates Blair's ability to cope with her numerous roles throughout the years at Downing St, her rise to QC, and the birth of their fourth child, Leo when she was 45 - the first baby born to a serving British Prime Minister for 150 years.

Explaining her "obsession with secrecy" for her children, Blair has said: "I don't want my children growing up thinking they are special just because of what their daddy does."

McDougall laments Blair's effort to keep the publicity firmly on her husband and suggests this prevents her becoming a role model for girls.

Readers may think, however, that in today's climate of fame for fame's sake, Blair has no need to stand in her husband's reflected limelight and is a positive role model in doing the opposite.

McDougall is also sure that Blair's willingness to accept second place in the family's life, in public at least, is temporary and when Tony Blair is no longer PM, she predicts it will be Blair's turn to further shine.

Whether this, and the third part of Blair's own prediction comes true, only time will tell.

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* Elizabeth Jones is an editorial assistant at the Herald.