UK’s First Lady gets the media’s wake-up call

Cherie Booth (centre), the wife of Britain’s new Prime Minister, was caught unaware early on Saturday morning when she seemed momentarily to forget she is now Britain’s First Lady.

LONDON, May 3: The wife of new British Prime Minister Tony Blair had a rude awakening to the perils of limelight today when her first day as Britain’s First Lady dawned with what will surely prove to be a moment of lifelong embarrassment.

Apparently, the Blair family will take some time to get used to being the second most-famous family in Britain. Cherie Booth learnt the hard way this morning that the Prime Minister’s wife must always expect a scrum of paparazzi outside her front door. After possibly the first good night’s sleep in six weeks, she answered the door in a blue-grey night shirt, to the sound of snapping shutters and whirring zoom lenses. The look on her face is reported to have “turned rapidly from mild embarrassment to surprise and then horror.”

Cherie Booth will be the first PM’s wife who will pursue a full-time career while at Downing Street. She is Queen’s Counsel (a very senior lawyer) who has recently become a Judge. She earns an estimated Å“2,50,000 a year, which is far more than her husband does.

She has been constantly in the public eye, but has almost never given interviews.