Cherie Blair is a saint for helping the needy rich

The Telegraph ^ | 23 Jul 2010

[nickcarraway]

Mrs Blair was merely performing an unpaid kindness in Albania, says Matthew Norman.

Amid all the excitement of Eamonn Holmes's pioneering legal battle to stop the BBC broadcasting jokes about his obesity, and with Keith Chegwin under fire for nicking other people's gags, you could be forgiven for having missed the really significant comedic news of the week.

In what leading scholars of mirth posit as Britain's most valuable comic export to that country since Norman Wisdom, Cherie Blair went to Albania. The great altruist made the trip, as you may already have guessed, to pay homage to her Albanian role model Mother Theresa and devote her time and love to the homeless and dispossessed.

Just my own little joke. The one-time Freebie Queen of Downing Street in fact travelled to Tirana on the private jet of a certain Rezart Taci to open his new TV station. Mr Taci's great wealth stems from oil, which seems a touching detail, what with all the rumours about Mr Tony Blair's cosy relationships with both Colonel Gaddafi and BP impinging on the release of that medical miracle Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber. It's so important, is it not, for long-married couples to keep finding new shared interests?

Cherie gave a speech as she cut the ribbon, and splendid it was, too. She was "honoured" to be there, she said, praising Mr Taci's "can-do attitude" and – ever the dedicated human rights activist – highlighting the sovereign value of a free media. Famously, Albanians adored Mr Wisdom, whom their Communist dictator Enver Hoxha thought a perfect paradigm of the downtrodden worker heroically resisting filthy capitalist oppressors (Mr Grimsdale). Yet they can seldom have felt their ribcages rent asunder at even one of Little Norman's hilarious collapses as at Cherie's moving words.

[RightGeek]

Reminds me of Bubba Clinton - wave a little cash and a private jet and he'll be your best buddy.

Cherie, we know what you are, we're just figuring the price.