Too much detail, Cherie

10:20am Monday 19th May 2008

THOSE embroiled in the upper echelons of politics often complain that they don't get paid enough. But there is a very nice insurance policy to be had by maintaining diaries and releasing autobiographies as soon as the shackles of responsibility come off.

Hot off the press - in the wake of tomes written in the names of Alastair Campbell, Lord Levy and that literary genius John Prescott - the latest blockbuster to lift the lid on life within the corridors of power (and to be serialised in The Sun) is the Cherie Blair story.

Having just spent £4m on Sir John Gielgud's 18th Century country mansion, the £1m book deal must have come in handy.

To be fair, I've met Mrs Blair a few times and always found her to be down to earth, easy to talk to and good fun. She is a highly intelligent woman with a fascinating story to tell so - on one hand - why shouldn't she cash in on her memoirs?

That said, I couldn't help cringing as I began reading the first day of The Sun's serialisation.

The gist of the opening day's revelations was that her fourth child Leo was conceived at Balmoral because she had been too embarrassed to pack any contraceptives.

When the couple had stayed at Balmoral the previous year, Mrs Blair had been shocked to discover that even the contents of her toilet bag had been unpacked for her. The bag included "its range of unmentionables" so, a year later, she'd decided not to pack anything embarrassing.

From there, the memoirs detail Mrs Blair's missed period and how she asked her friend Carole Chaplin to buy her a pregnancy testing kit.

Now I'm sure Balmoral was a particularly romantic setting, and Tony is clearly utterly irresistible, but this was more like something penned by Jordan or Jade Goody, rather than the wife of the former Prime Minister.

And I couldn't help thinking that it sent out a message that contraception is a cause for acute embarrassment - surely the antithesis of responsible sex education.

I'VE been concerned for some time about the implications of this country's obsession with education league tables.

I was, therefore, interested to read the conclusions of an inquiry by the Commons schools select committee last week.

The committee found that "teaching to the test" is now so endemic that pupils are often missing out on a rounded education in the interests of making the school look good.

In my top drawer, I've kept a recent letter from a college student who was asking for advice about a career in journalism.

I was genuinely shocked to see that the student couldn't spell, had no grasp of basic grammar, and clearly didn't have a clue about apostrophes.

And yet he had an A grade in GCSE English.

How can that happen?

Qualifications are important. But those in education who say they are all that matters are wrong. To get jobs in the real world, young people need much more that certificates.

HEADLINES are like buses. Sometimes, you can't find one when you need one. Other times, three or four come along in seconds.

Last Friday, we had a lovely picture of a family of swans bringing rush-hour traffic to a standstill in Newcastle by sedately crossing the road.

Headline suggestions flocked in from around the newsroom: Mirror, cygnet, manoeuvre Swan For The RoadDrivers get a cob on.

All very good, but I'm the editor and I decided it should be Swan-way traffic.

That's what you call swanupmanship.

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