Cherie Blair gives a glimpse of 'Goldfish Bowl'
(China Daily)
Updated: 2005-12-05 05:28

LONDON: "I've got a theory that if you knew what it was like, you'd never volunteer for it."

That's Cherie Blair's take on the reality of life in No 10 Downing Street in a new television documentary.

The programme, "Married to the Prime Minister," to be broadcast on Britain's Channel 4 today, will be the first time the wife of a serving British prime minister has allowed cameras behind the scenes at Downing Street.

To the strains of Stevie Wonder's My Cherie Amour, viewers will see the first lady of Downing Street in her many guises: suited and hard at work in her legal practice; glamorous at a celebrity party; and, most surprisingly perhaps, as a traditional wife with dinner waiting for her husband at the end of a hard day.

"When Tony gets home, he says 'Where's Cherie?' and then 'Where's my dinner?'," she says. "We don't have any help, so if the prime minister is going to be fed, it's up to me to make sure he's fed. I always said he would never have married me if he wasn't convinced I was a good cook."

The documentary is based on Cherie's book, "The Goldfish Bowl: Married to the Prime Minister," and tackles a thorny question close to her heart: how the "first lady of Downing Street" should conduct herself. "You're there to be a listening ear, the person that puts (the prime minister) first when there's a lot of demands on his time, and sometimes the person who just says, 'It's time to go to bed now'," she explains.

She interviews her three living predecessors, Clarissa Eden, Mary Wilson and Norma Major on their experiences of life inside No 10.

A number of tensions emerge. Though she may not be as badly off as Norma Major, who says that she and John "never ate a meal on our own while we were there, not even breakfast," Cherie would clearly like more time alone with her husband. "If you don't have the other people you don't get your husband, so you might as well put up with the other people," she says.

She also finds the dual demands of her professional life and her duties at home a strain. "Women now do work, and therefore in the future people will expect the spouse of the PM, whether man or woman, to have a job," she says.

"On the other hand, I think the public expect me, and would expect any prime ministerial wife, to do something over and above my profession."

The project was inspired by Cherie's first run-in with the media: the morning after the 1997 election, when she was caught on camera with her hair tousled and in a less-than-glamorous nightdress.

"We hadn't had much sleep, and the bell rang and the police officer said you must come down, so I padded down in my nightie with my hair standing on end," she says.

"When I opened the door, light bulbs flashed. My first thought was: 'Oh, my God, Tony's going to kill me.' I shut the door, and that's when I realized I was living in a goldfish bowl. It was quite a shock."

Cherie's parting shot makes it clear that she's not yet planning her retirement from public life. "Life in Downing Street is tremendously exciting, but it can be totally frustrating," she says. "And it's not over yet."

(China Daily 12/05/2005 page1)