Travelled down to Liverpool to the Jury's Inn hotel expecting to shuffle through an entourage of minders and media reporters to ask her about Tony's controversial book launch.
But what I found was the total opposite. Cherie stood in a room talking politely with two nurses from Crosby charity Jospice.
I expected a media-savvy woman with a clued-up cautious view on journalists because of her past experiences but what I found was one of the most approachable people I've ever interviewed.
Cherie sat me down next to her in the other side of this private meeting room and promptly but politely with an eye-catching smile and all the manorisms of a retired headmistress, began to ask about my education and how long I've been a journalist for.
Whether this was a clever technique to divert attention away from herself I will never know, but what struck me was how friendly and seemingly sincere this woman was.
I'd like to think she opened herself up during the interview as she told about her views of life and death.
“I can remember as a girl in Waterloo, I was the eldest child so my grandma made me go to lots of funerals.
“When someone died, we used to draw the front room curtains back then and being a catholic family we also had a lot of rituals.
”We seem to be more closed up about death now, many people are still very frightened about dying and Jospice helps people come to terms with that.“
Of course I couldn't go back to my editor without having asked her about Tony Blair's book, but she replied in a well rehearsed manor: “whatever the media may think, the sales of the book speak for themselves, it shows that a lot of people are still fans of Tony.”
Maybe so, but after 15 minutes with Cherie I am still none the wiser as to why the media dislike her. Top top woman.
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