Cherie Blair's Royal Progress

The personal is the political, they say. Whatever that may mean, we certainly like to imagine that celebrities actually live the characters they portray. And we like to imagine that the politicians of the other party are demonstrably not the kind, compassionate souls that other people’s money (actually, our money) makes them appear.

A recent biography of Britain’s First Couple, Tony and Cherie: A Special Relationship, by Paul Scott, gives us everything we want to believe about Cherie Blair, according to Frank Johnson (subscription required) in The Spectator, and more.

You see, as is proper in a working-class lass, Cherie Blair did not at all enjoy her trip to the Queens’s castle in Balmoral, Scotland.

First of all, she hated the ghoulish statue at the foot of her bed. Then she hated the bagpiper announcing the fresh Scottish morning at 6:00 am every day. The Queen’s royal corgis made “her eyes bulge, go red and begin to water.” Of course, writes Frank Johnson, this is probably because the royal pooches are not ordinary corgis but royal corgis. Not the sort of privileged animal likely to spark sympathy in the progressive breast of barrister Cherie Booth QC, who has defended the right of Muslim girls to wear the burqa in British schools.

All this is, of course, mere by-play. What really prompts an attack of acid reflux in the unbiased reader is the story of Cherie and the Tea with the Queen Mum.

Mrs Blair [did not] enjoy having to attend an afternoon tea party for the late Queen Mother’s `elderly women friends during a Balmoral holiday’. According to the book `it was not just tea but a steady supply of sherry that was on offer to the titled OAPs [old age pensioners]. The party began in a genteel enough manner, but as the afternoon progressed it steadily descended into a raucous sing-along with the Queen Mother leading from the front and insisting that a mortified Cherie join in every tune.’

Dear me. Now really. Who is there with a heart so hard that they could not enjoy, indeed not feel a lump in the throat when singing along with a bevy of slightly drunk little old ladies as they rumbled through the good old songs of their youth?

Maybe Cherie Blair would prefer a tuneful ditty from the Rolling Stones golden age, such as the compassionate and sensitive “Let’s Spend the Night Together.”