FactCheck: Cherie speaks for herself

"My memory is not infallible and this is not a history book. It is simply one woman's attempts to recollect her life."

So says Cherie Blair at the start of her autobiography, Speaking for Myself. Quite a disclaimer for a book that reveals minute details of everything from the former prime minster's darkest hours to, well, her "contraceptive equipment".

So just how infallible, or fallible, is her tome?

Cherie devotes two pages to an infamous Marie Claire article. Away from the watchful eye of key press aide Fiona Millar, the magazine gained access to a toy-strewn 10 Downing Steet - and got a killer snap of "lifestyle guru" Carole Caplin touching up Cherie's lippy on the prime ministerial bed.

We now have the words of three of the main players involved - and they don't all stack up.

"For what it's worth, 'Lippygate' is also different from what I recall," wrote Barbara Ellen, the article's author, in The Observer last week.

"In just one example, Cherie has herself trying desperately to keep us away from Leo; I remember her taking us into the garden to introduce us to him."

In Cherie's account, she sends the hacks out to the garden with the children's nanny - "anything to get them out of the flat".

There's also the question of whether Cherie approved the pictures. Mrs Blair describes being "horrified" on seeing them: "We rang the magazine immediately, said we didn't want those particular pictures used, as they constituted an invasion of our privacy."

But the editor told her, "Sorry but these are our pictures and we intend to use them".

Which, again, differs from a detailed account Barbara Ellen gave in The Observer at the time (described as "accurate" by Fiona Millar in a later Guardian piece).

"As a courtesy, Marie Claire also let Cherie see the photographs before they were printed," Ellen wrote.

"Cherie displayed concern about You Know Which Ones but Caplin was so upbeat and positive about them that the Prime Minister's wife allowed herself to be swayed."

It was the talk of Blair's last conference as Labour leader: the comment overheard by a respected American news agency. Downing Street denied it, originally claiming Cherie had been misheard saying "I need to get by"; Bloomberg stuck by its story.

Whatever the truth, the damage was done, as just a few of the next day's headlines show: "'That's a lie' - the remark that wrecked Brown's day" (The Guardian), "How four words undermined months of work" (The Independent), "Cherie rains on Gordon's parade" (Daily Mail), "Cherie in the Brown stuff" (The Sun), "How spin-doctors failed to keep the Cherie gaffe under control" (The Times).

It's still Cherie's word against Bloomberg's, although her "whatever I might have felt" suggests that she was not entirely unhappy about the reported comment.

In November 1999, the PM's spokesperson Alastair Campbell got a call from then-Mirror editor, Piers Morgan, to say he knew Cherie was pregnant.

Cherie claims she and Campbell agreed on a scoop-sabotaging tactic of releasing the news to the country at large via a news agency, "which suited Alastair fine", as he wouldn't have to deal with put-out papers who had been second in line for the news.

"'We'll have a quote from Tony and a quote from you,' [Alastair] said, and put the phone down."

According to Cherie's account, it all went wrong when Fiona Millar took a call from then-Sun deputy editor Rebekah Wade. Assuming the story was already out on PA, Cherie chatted away, little realising that she was in fact giving the scoop to Morgan's main rival and starting a Cherie-Mirror feud that lasted for years.

But the story did not run on PA until much later, and Campbell had no recollection of the dispersal tactic in his diaries. He notes on 18 November 1999: "I had a meeting with Fiona and we agreed we would just let the Mirror run it and then confirm.

"But the Sun had heard something and Rebekah Wade was paging and calling both of us relentlessly. Eventually, after speaking to CB, Fiona gave the story to Rebekah around eight, which was clearly going to be disasterville with Piers."

Did baby Blair have the MMR jab? Back in 2001, controversy raged over now-widely discredited suggestions that the vaccine could be linked with autism, and the Blairs' refusal to confirm whether their son had had the triple jab gave anti-MMR campaigners further ammunition.

"Come clean, Cherie" - a Daily Mail headline she singles out - sat on top of an article describing how the "Tories step up pressure over Leo and MMR".

The Blairs' insistence that family medical matters must be kept private, was, though not without criticism, understandable.

But Cherie tells us in her book, simply, that "I did get Leo vaccinated, not least because it's irresponsible not to - there's absolutely no doubt that the incidence of disease goes up if vaccinations go down - and he was given his MMR jab within the recommended time frame."

This decision to spread the news on her own terms, rather than when the press and politicians wanted to know, somewhat undermines her earlier insistence on privacy.

Cherie recounts the pain of losing a baby on 5 August 2002 - and her annoyance at Tony Blair's and Alistair Campbell's reaction: "I couldn't believe it. There I was, bleeding, and they were talking about what was going to be the line to the press."

The miscarriage meant the Blairs' scheduled August 6 holiday departure was delayed - and on the same day, the BBC reported that Cherie had suffered a miscarriage. The next day, the news was splashed across the national press.

Cherie's diary suggests her husband and Campbell were desperate to get the news out, but Campbell's description of the events - though not entirely contradictory - suggests a slightly more measured approach to the spinning.

Blair was down but philosophical, he notes; Cherie was very low, and both were worried that "it would crank up the media interest in their holiday".

"We decided against actually putting something out and instead waited for calls from the press once they noticed what was going on, which they did when the kids went to France without TB and CB."

Sources

Cherie Blair, Speaking for Myself (Little Brown)
Alastair Campbell, The Blair Years (Random House)
Days of whine and poses, The Observer
Lippygate: the truth, The Observer
My battle with the PCC, The Guardian
BBC News reports Cherie's miscarriage

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