Audiences nod off as Cherie Blair plugs her book

Cherie Blair holding six month old spina bifida patient Ashlee Nicholson-Collins during a visit to the Starship Hospital. Picture / Martin Sykes

SYDNEY - Australians remember the last time Cherie Blair came to call. Offered a free pick of the goodies at a Melbourne department store, she swept out with no fewer than 68 items, for which she only belatedly offered to pay.

This time, on a tour that mixes charity fundraising with book plugging and fee-earning, Mrs Blair will leave with considerably more profit. But people here and in Britain are starting to ask: at what cost to her reputation?

Even before she embarked on the tour, there was biting criticism from the British press. "Shame of Cherie's money-grubbing" was an Evening Standard headline, and the Conservative Party co-chairman, Liam Fox, chipped in with: "She's Cherie Booth in her professional life, but Cherie Blair when there's cash to be made."

Although the children's charity for which she spoke in New Zealand was thrilled at the $208,000 the event raised, the impression once more is that Cherie Blair has been poorly advised.

According to her critics, any Australian could have warned her of the perils of hiring the country's most notorious spin-doctor, Max Markson, to promote her charity tour.

With the same naivety she displayed in her dealings with another colourful Australian, Peter Foster, who helped her buy two cut-price flats in Bristol, Mrs Blair engaged the services of a man with a questionable past and an autobiography entitled Show Me the Money. Even Mr Foster, a convicted conman, recoils at Mr Markson's name. "Even I draw the line at trying to make money out of charity."

That was the principal charge levelled at Mrs Blair as she criss-crossed Australia, regaling guests at $212-a-head dinners with insipid tales of Downing St and plugs for her new book, The Goldfish Bowl, about prime ministers' spouses.

Her six-city Australasian tour, which included a stop in Auckland, has raised funds for children's hospitals.

But a leaked draft budget prepared by British-born Mr Markson suggested that Mrs Blair would be paid $269,000, with the promoters set to receive $295,000. Mr Markson, who heads the public relations firm Markson Sparks!, denounced the figures as "totally false" but refused to disclose her fee, citing contractual obligations. His agency's cut was "just" $110,000, he claimed. The Children's Cancer Institute Australia, meanwhile, expects $270,600 from the week-long tour.

While the sums remain unknown, Australians are unimpressed by the notion that as little as one-third of their money may end up going to a good cause. One newspaper even reported, on the eve of Mrs Blair's dinner in Adelaide, that the law governing charity fundraising would be changed so "proceeds cannot be 'seriously eroded' by administration, management or agents' fees".

With her family under financial strain after buying a £3.6 million ($9.42 million) London house, suspicions are high that Mrs Blair's motives were mercenary.

Australians note that Mrs Blair, who calls herself Cherie Booth in her professional life, chose to use her husband's name last week. To make matters worse, her talks were poorly received. In Auckland she twice referred to her audience as Australians.

At a dinner at the glitzy Burswood Casino, on the Swan River in Perth, several guests nodded off as she presented photographs of her children and recounted the pitfalls of "living above the shop".

The audience at a gala dinner at the Melbourne Convention Centre was similarly underwhelmed.

Guests turned up expecting Mrs Blair, billed as the "noted British attorney, human rights advocate and wife of Prime Minister Tony Blair", to provide insights into her life at the Bar and her espousal of the downtrodden.

Instead, Mrs Blair, who made her final appearance in Sydney, spent the bulk of her 45-minute lecture nakedly promoting her book, which was on sale for £21 ($55 - ordinary readers can buy it for £13.29 on Amazon).

"People were going to sleep, to be honest," one guest, Steve Seddon, told Channel Nine television.

Accompanying her during the week was Mr Markson, 48, whose agency has organised scores of charity events, and speaking tours of Australia by celebrities as luminous as Nelson Mandela, Bill Clinton, George Bush snr and Rudolph Giuliani, the former New York City mayor.

But his reputation is not squeaky clean. He was twice named in state parliaments over funds allegedly owed to charities. One, the Sydney Children's Hospital Foundation, accused him of "abhorrent" behaviour after he allegedly failed to pay it $89,000 from a fundraising dinner.

The Queen Elizabeth Hospital Research Foundation in Adelaide claims it was promised $215,671 from a function addressed by Mr Giuliani in 2003. It received just $22,000, while Mr Giuliani was paid $328,480.

But not everyone was unhappy with the results of Mrs Blair's talk.

Andrew Young, chief executive of the Starship Foundation, said: "We got double what we expected, and we carried no risk or responsibility."

- INDEPENDENT