Once Blair is in office, the most engaging character in the story is Cherie's hairdresser, André [Suard], who travels with her (she pays-- and boy does she mind) and brings order to what Cherie would be the first to admit is ambient chaos. Cherie's clothes and appearance are one of the subjects on which she was lavishly attacked by the papers; this seemed nasty and unfair at the time, and seems more so once you have read her account of how uninterested in fashion she had been before, and how tormenting she found the press's not-at-all-benign interest. It was André who rode to the rescue, sorting out the frocks and the 'do and many other things beside. At the U.N.'s Millennium General Assembly in 2000, [Cherie Blair's hairdresser] André had charge of newborn Leo while his parents were otherwise engaged; he brings Leo to the Waldorf Hotel to meet Cherie via an emergency stop at Ralph Lauren to replace Leo's outfit after an exploding-nappy incident. (At this point, you know that whatever Cherie was paying him, it wasn't enough.) He cleaned Leo up, changed his nappy, and was given a new outfit of dungarees and a jumper with the Stars and Stripes; he was then taken through the kitchens of the Waldorf ("the route of choice for American presidents and their wives") and straight in to see Bill and Hillary Clinton. "I arrived about five minutes later, to find Bill holding Leo and generally cooing, although my son's red face showed that he had clearly been exercising his lungs until very recently. André gave me one of his looks. "Cherie," he hissed. "Don't you ever do that to me again." Some time later they go to meet Blair at the U.N. and he asks "Why on earth is the British prime minister's son wearing an American jumper?"
--From a review by John Lanchester of Cherie Blair's book Speaking For Myself in the London Review of Books, 17 July 2008
Comments