Blair grilled on TV youth show
Tony Blair has admitted that he has never sent flowers to his wife Cherie.
The admission is one of a series of personal revelations made by the Prime Minister during the 24 hours he spent with interviewer June Sarpong for Channel Four’s youth programme, T4.
Ms Sarpong shadowed Mr Blair over two days in December for the fly-on-the-wall documentary.
The programme ‘Tony and June’ shows Mr Blair attending events in his Sedgefield constituency and visiting his local working men’s club for a pint.
Ms Sarpong also accompanied the Prime Minister to one of David Blunkett’s last press conferences as Home Secretary.
During breaks in Mr Blair’s busy 24-hour schedule – in which he took three flights, visited 15 locations and made 11 speeches – Ms Sarpong asked the Prime Minister the kind of questions he rarely faces in heavyweight political interviews.
Asked how often he sends flowers to his wife, Mr Blair admitted: “I’ve never sent her flowers. If I sent her flowers, she would get worried.”
The Prime Minister quickly added that he was a romantic at heart.
“There are other ways of being romantic,” he stressed.
During the programme, Mr Blair also admits to a teenage crush on Hollywood beauty Grace Kelly and reveals that he sometimes has to “wing it” at public appearances he has not had time to prepare for.
The Prime Minister, who says he longs to be able to go to the pub without being recognised, also admits that he sometimes bites his lip when confronted by members of the public.
“The worst thing is when someone is giving you a real earful and you think ‘I’m going to say something I will regret’… John (Prescott) gets away with it, but I wouldn’t get away with it,” he said.
The hour-long documentary also shows the Prime Minister facing a grilling from an audience of young people over a range of issues including Britain’s relationship with the US, the war on Iraq and binge drinking.
A straw poll of viewers revealed in the programme is likely to come as a disappointment to Mr Blair, with two-thirds of people saying they did not trust the Prime Minister – twice as many as for Conservative leader Michael Howard and three times as many as for the Liberal Democrats’ Charles Kennedy.
The hour-long documentary will be screened on Sunday at 1300 GMT.
