True Fiction

Far be it for me to intrude upon private grief, but I did experience a warm glow of schadenfreude at the latest savaging of Cherie Blair's autobiography (you know, the one which tells how she clawed her way out of the mean streets of Crosby).
Peter Kilfoyle, brought back by Kinnock from Australia to expel Militant, enthusiastically embraced the New Labour "project", as Peter Mandelson once called it. Indeed, Kilfoyle served as a junior defence minister during the first term of Blair's government. However, a combination of old right-wing Labour sensitivities & personal ego meant that Kilfoyle's take on New Labour soured. Now, in a move which he doubtless saw as manna from heaven, the MP for Liverpool Walton has been invited to review Cherie's tome (http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-news/regional-news/2008/07/16/liverpool-mp-accuses-cherie-blair-of-inventing-poverty-stricken-childhood-64375-21348524/ ).
Believe it or not, I haven't read the book (those nauseating Radio 4 extracts were enough, quite frankly), but it seems there's at least one howler:
"Dismissing the autobiography as full of 'gossip and social froth', Mr Kilfoyle wrote: 'She talks of the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth sailing from the Mersey. They never did -- Southampton was their home port.' "
I'm not that surprised, however, at this re-writing of local maritime history. After all, her husband was equally fictitious in portraying the WMD threat prior to the Iraq war.