THE memory of Norma Major's arrival at 10 Downing St is finally being expunged only she as leaves it. Shoulders hunched as if anticipating a wallop, eyes blinking furiously at the camera flashes, mouth torn between agonised gapes, giggles and grins.
She clearly liked the suit she was wearing that night; blue, a bit shapeless, comfortable looking. Liked it so much that she wore it again the next day. Bad decision.
"Dowdy Norma," the tabloids christened her. "One of the greatest mistakes of my life," she said later, pathetically.
Ah, but it will be different for Cherie, surely - that young, high flying QC on £250,000 a year, well versed in City ways, pesto and polenta? Think again.
The night Tony was acclaimed leader, Cherie got the once over from the hacks. They savaged her and her dress sense.
Next day, she woke up to see herself condemned as the only part of her husband's victory package overlooked by the image makers. What do you do? Bury yourself in your briefs and stand accused of being an unsupportive cow?
Or give in to the tabloids, become a fashion plate, then watch them pile ignominy on you for submitting to repackaging by the spindoctors? Cherie tried both. Big mistake.
The woman who didn't care much for sport as a girl joined a gym and got a personal fitness trainer. She softened her hairstyle and struggled to appear comfortable. But no matter what she wore she was deemed one big fashion nono.
The strain of it made her anorexic, according to one Labour loyalist. The baggy angora sweater (a Christmas present from Tony), snapped by a photographer while she was carrying home the shopping, looking harassed, triggered a thousand pofaced pronouncements that here was a stressed out "hyperwoman" frantically juggling home and career - not to mention a moronic media, which, of course, they didn't.
But lest she relax once the election was declared and imagine that the campaign might throw up more substantial challenges for media space, one paper promptly embarked on a "Cherie Watch" column.
Sample: "Yesterday, Cherie Blair was in nautical mood again, wearing navy palazzo pants costing £135. The navy and white graded stripe matelot style sleeve top cost £114 and matching polo tunic £182."
Contrast this treatment of an intelligent woman, a loyal, hard working mother of three, with that accorded to cardieclad Denis Thatcher, shambling around a golf course, though never dangerously far from a large whiskey, mumbling about reptile journalists.
And while Cherie stands accused of hiding behind her minders, it's worth remembering Denis's tip to Norma Major as he passed the toxic chalice: give no interviews.
"Always present, never there," was how he saw the role of consort, according to his daughter. He got away with it, of course. Norma didn't. Nor will Cherie.
"Mousewife Norma" began memorably, by digging her heels in and declaring that she would not be moving into the pokey flat in Downing Street because her children and family life in Great Stukeley came first. That little act of rebellion was quickly squelched.
As she waves goodbye to all that, she will miss the royal box at Covent Garden but hardly living above the shop at No 10.
The arrival of the boisterous Blair brood there will be watched with mighty anticipation.
Where, precisely, in this cramped flat, will Euan (13) Nicholas (11) and Kathryn (9) drop the bicycles, rollerblades and electric guitars and how soon will the Subbuteo wind up on the Cabinet table?
Which of the notoriously haughty Whitehall mandarins will crack first after once again falling over a mucky football hoot or a couple of school bags? Can the National Gallery survive the indignity of having its paintings supplanted by posters of Baby Spice?
Then again, they might not move in at all. There is no constitutional requirement to do so, but if Tony Blair does indeed make it his home, he will be the first Labour leader to do so for 27 years. Harold Wilson endured the flat only for his first term. Jim Callaghan lived in Kennington.
In any event, Tony and Cherie will not be readily parted. Noone has managed so far to punch holes in their relationship. "She still excites me, I adore her", he said recently about her. The feeling is mutual. She is the rarest of political wives, the kind who can gaze soppily at her husband and be credible.
His comments about his children also ring true: "I can't imagine being separated from them. I suppose they'll grow up and go off, but you know I find it difficult to contemplate how anyone could ever deal with that'
He has enjoyed the image of an involved father, driving them to school, pushing the swings, swapping repartee across the breakfast table in election broadcasts. Reports that he will leave a meeting at 6.45 to see his children before they go to bed, whatever the pressures to stay, sit uneasily with tales of the nanny who quit because Tony and Cherie always got home so late that her social life was in tatters.
But no one disputes that in exchange for the interminable hours, Blair nannies are paid top rates and clearly appreciated. All the nannies, past and present, were invited to Cherie's 40th birthday party at a fashionable Islington restaurant, two years ago. The real Cherie Watch lies in what happens next.
Anyone who expects her to abandon the bar lightly, should look to her impoverished childhood - her mother worked in a fish and chip shop at one stage to support Cherie and her sister - and the sacrifices entailed in pulling herself to the top of a class bound profession. But it would be daft to assume that her practice could proceed as before, given a system under which she has pursued Labour voting poll tax defaulters and defended a Tory led Brent council as well as the fact that much of her work involves judicial review of government policies.
Those who believe she will be easy meat for the spin doctors might look at how she handled her father, Tony Booth, a womaniser with a drink problem who left her mother when she was very young. Booth became a household name in the 1960s as the Scouse git in Till Death Do Us Part and stayed in the public eye chiefly by being married at one stage to Pat Phoenix (of Coronation Street) as well as burning himself hideously while making a drunken assault on a former girlfriend's flat.
It might have been simpler for a putative Prime Minister's wife to sever all links with such a character but Cherie is made of stronger stuff. She just hangs in there.
"He's her dad, and she loves him", said a friend.
She was accused of naivete when she seemed bemused at the fuss surrounding Euan and Nicholas' enrolment at a private Catholic school. Maybe so, but the fact is that her feisty, nonconformist mother had done the same for her. The way Cherie saw it, Catholic parents always had to bus their children across town and as the Blairs appear to take their religion seriously, it would take a churlish person to doubt their motives.
Tony - whose father grew up in the slums of the Clyde, managed to get a PhD in law, then suffered a devastating stroke in his 40s - is a practising Christian, always travels with a Bible, tries to get to a Sunday service, but "can't stand politicians who wear God on their sleeve".
Meanwhile, Cherie is probably praying that Tony will remain anchored by faith and family. He is touchingly domestic, according to one female front bencher, the kind of man who asks how your new relationship's going, or passes you a napkin just before the butter dribbles down your chin.
Can it be true? A man who is young, handsomeish, sensitive and powerful to hoot? Opponents may grind away at the sterilised gleam and bland, say nothing ways. Cherie and the rest will be gearing up for the swoon factor.
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