Cheery Cherie

Interviewed Cherie Blair this week predicting to come away with an understanding as to why the media dislike her so much.

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.

Tory Times

I've just managed to get through my first working day under a Conservative Government and somehow scraped through unscathed.

There have been no chairs put through the office windows nor a sign of a repeat of the Toxteth riots or a mass amount of people been put out of jobs.

Sat in a pub last night with six of my mates, alarm bells rang out when someone got a text saying Cameron is the new PM.

The night was ruined as the conversation turned from football and banter to finance and budget.

Seven lads, all under the age of 25, none of them having worked a day under a Tory Government, began to speculate as to how bad spending cuts will be, amid record youth unemployment and the highest ever graduation rates.

Haunted by parent's tales of millions out of work, that 'witch' Maggie Thatcher (the milk snatcher) took away free milk from children and vanished the voice of working class Britain, stripping away power from the unions.

The turnout for this election was 65%. Some couldn't vote because they ran out of paper while others complained they couldn't be bothered waiting because of mass queues at polling stations.

These are the fast days of the fast internet, fast microwavable pasta, fast mobile phones – people have OD OCD (on-demand obsessive compulsive disorder).

Here's to hoping that Cameron and Clegg don't follow in Thatcher's footsteps and please the young OD OCD generation with fast solutions to match.