Spicy diary will put the heat on Cherie

Tony and Cherie Blair have had a long and often strained relationship with journalist Piers Morgan. Picture / Reuters

Cherie Blair is set to have her reputation attacked again with the publication of "secret diaries" written by the bad boy of British newspapers, Piers Morgan, who accuses her of being insecure, moody and a flirt.

Serialisation of Morgan's book in the Daily Mail coincides with another visit to the United States by the British Prime Minister's wife, who has developed a well-paid sideline as an after-dinner speaker, who reputedly made more than 100,000 ($265,000) from her controversial trip to New Zealand and Australia.

The "diaries" are said to be full of revelations about the famous and the powerful with whom Morgan rubbed shoulders as a journalist.

He has promised to tell what Prime Minister Tony Blair "really" thinks of Alastair Campbell, Blair's former spin-doctor, and to give an account of how a photograph of Cherie Blair sunbathing topless on a holiday beach was taken.

He admits that Cherie Blair heartily disliked him, and likens her to the late Princess Diana.

"I don't hate Cherie. She had an extremely difficult upbringing that left her pretty damaged. She's not dissimilar to Diana in that respect.

"The last time I saw her was at Peter Mandelson's leaving do, where she flirted with me. The chivalrous thing is to say that I wouldn't be her type."

Morgan was sacked after nine years as editor of the Daily Mirror after his newspaper published photographs of British squaddies allegedly maltreating an Iraqi prisoner. The pictures were fakes.

He now claims to have made more money out of that than if he had stayed in the job for another five years. His advance for his diaries is reputed to have been 1.2 million ($3.18 million) and he was paid 1.7 million compensation for losing his job.

The revelation that he kept a diary all those years has puzzled old colleagues who have been contacted by him so that he could pick their memories.

Others who know Morgan have pointed out that he is not a natural observer and recorder of events, because he was never a good listener. "He was a great talker, who loved attention," one said.

But the "diary" is destined to be a sensation, with famous names running right through it. Morgan first made his name as a journalist on the Sun through his knack of getting his face into photographs of the famous.

The sections likely to make the biggest impact will be those that describe Morgan's encounters with leading figures in the Labour Government. He was a former Tory who became a Blairite in the 1990s, and did a great deal to help finish the Tories.

Having become editor of the News of the World at the age of 28, in 1993, he ran a series of Tory "sleaze" stories, which usually led to yet another member of John Major's Government resigning.

At the Mirror, aged 30, Morgan was in constant touch with the Blairs, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, former minister Peter Mandelson and others. His diary records Cherie Blair's unconcealed dislike for him.

A fortnight after his dismissal, he was walking through Soho when a car door opened to reveal a grinning Cherie Blair, who insisted that he must come to a Downing St dinner to which he had been invited in his capacity as the Daily Mirror's editor. He reminded her that he had been sacked, and she exclaimed: "Yes, we're still celebrating!"

That could be explained by the way Morgan latterly changed the Daily Mirror's political line, and campaigned relentlessly against the Iraq war - but he attributes the problem to Cherie Blair's "insecure" personality.

The Prime Minister's wife was raised in a single-parent household in Liverpool. She is more conscious than her husband of the fact that his Prime Minister's annual salary, which will rise in April to 183,932, is less than he could be earning as a barrister. The couple also lost out when they sold their Islington home in 1997 to move into Downing St.

This week, she will give a speech at Samford University , for which she will get a fee that could come to 10,000. She will no doubt plug The Goldfish Bowl, her book about Prime Ministers' wives.

Morgan has complained repeatedly about Cherie Blair's attitude to him, saying that "it was unhelpful to the general relationship between the Mirror and Downing St that the wife of the Labour Prime Minister had such a vengeful hatred for me". It is also arguable that his own flamboyant behaviour was "unhelpful" - but that observation may not have found its way into Morgan's diaries.

- INDEPENDENT