Libby Purves in the Times (UK) weighs in on the Cherie Blair scandal with The detail may be funny, but Cherie's vanity isn't:
Yes, of course it’s funny. A rebirthing ceremony, a topless model peddling magic pendants and nude scrubdowns! A New Age guru with big hair and indecent leggings, licensed to go through the Downing Street larder throwing out additives, yet herself accumulating toxic men - one of whom, fresh from a fraudulent slimming tea business, smarms up to a credulous QC with e-mails saying "Your pleasure is my purpose", and involves her with an accountant charged with money-laundering! Yet all this tatty nonsense is not encrusting some dopey showbiz couple, but the squeaky-clean, earnest, churchgoing, ineffably self-righteous Blairs! You would need a heart of stone not to giggle."Fergoid characteristics" - what a cut!
The trouble is that the laughing stops with a choke when you realise just how much harm has been done, not only to the Prime Minister's reputation but also to the useful and decent side of Cherie Blair’s public work. Even if you discount the violent hostility of the Mail newspapers, the bare facts turn Mrs Blair into a laughing-stock of almost Fergie proportions. The lie which she made the Downing Street press office tell us was bad enough - and it was a lie, frankly, not a "misapprehension", because if a man negotiating a half-million-pound purchase, discussing family trusts and giving warnings on stamp duty is not a "financial adviser", who the hell is?
But beyond that, the whole affair reveals dreadfully Fergoid characteristics, upsetting in a lawyer. There is naive credulity, a mistaken conviction that people simply adore to do her little services without favours in return, and on top of it all that distressing tendency of many rich people to cheesepare as if they were broke. For me, as a former natural supporter of Mrs Blair, the worst bit of those terrible e-mails was where the shyster tells her that his company will pick up the accountancy bill, and is not immediately sent a rocket saying "you will do no such thing!". Even a reputable journalist, for God's sake, wouldn't accept a £4,000 freebie service from a relative stranger without suspecting that there was no free lunch. But an aspiring judge? A PM's wife? God save us!
Obligatory tabloid pictures here and here. Get 'em while they're hot since the News of the World has a "rudimentary" web site and no archives.
