Row over Cherie’s ‘life as wife’ talk

[emad]

May 30, 2005


By Helen Rumbelow, Political Correspondent

CHERIE BLAIR was accused yesterday of profiteering from her husband’s position by earning thousands of pounds from a speech in Washington at about the same time that Tony Blair has a political summit there.

Mrs Blair’s event will be her biggest engagement to date in her capacity as the wife of the Prime Minister, speaking alone to a 2,500-member audience in Washington about life at 10 Downing Street.

In the past, her speaking tours have focused on private lunches and dinners, but the event, billed as an evening with “the Trailblazing First Lady of Downing Street”, is expected to make a profit of £80,000. Mrs Blair will receive a cut of the earnings from the evening at the Kennedy Centre arts complex. Her fees usually run into tens of thousands.

Tickets, ranging from £30 to £330 packages including dinner and a coffee with Mrs Blair, are almost sold out, but the profile of the evening undoubtedly will be raised by the Prime Minister’s visit to the White House at a similar time.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,170-1633378,00.html

SOMEONE in the audience should ask her just how much £££££££££££s she lost after having to sell the matrimonial home at No 1 Richmond Crescent, Islington, London N1 in 1997 after being sued for criminal damage, harrassment and conspiracy to injure the owners of a North London property that she tried to blow up with a smuggled bomb in the summer of 1986.....

[patricia92243]

1. Does that mean that Laura Bush is getting big bucks on her "tour?" n/t

[punpirate]

2. To hell with her speaking fees...

... what the hell happens every time Tony comes over to have a quiet chat with Dubya?

[AP]

3. The Tories went after her for having a job in '97 and '01 and I like to

think it cost them the votes of women.