Carole Caplin: The woman who wants the Blairs to do things her way

Say what you like about the ghastly faux-intimacy of modern, popular-culture driven, trivia-obsessed life. But at least nowadays the more nosy among us don't have to run the risk of meeting the eye of an outraged householder as we meander along the road squinting shamelessly into other people's homes.

On the contrary, householders seem to be clamouring to invite intimate inspection of their dwellings. This week, as usual, the entire population has had the opportunity to poke around in innumerable living spaces. The one that has added most to the gaiety of the nation though, has got to be Tony and Cherie's place.

Not that Tony was there. Instead, when Marie Claire spent a day with Cherie Blair, there was no husbandly manifestation. Young Leo did feature, out in the garden with his nanny. But the intimate presence in Mrs Blair's life, as in her son's, was not a relation but a paid companion, the very lovely Ms Carole Caplin.

Quite a stir was created by the sight of Ms Caplin, wielding a lip-brush and gesturing to the camera, on the brink of touching up the lips of a puckered and supplicant Cherie. Quite a stir was also created by the small signs of untidiness around the Blairs' Downing Street flat. "What woman," asked the massed harridans of Fleet Street, "wouldn't tidy up before a photographer came to her house? If Cherie thinks she's showing her ordinariness by showing her mess, then she's even more out-of-touch than we thought she was."

Actually, though, I think they're all mistaken. Far from calculatedly leaving mess, Mrs Blair probably didn't even register that these minor tangles of household detritus could even be construed as mess. One of the more endearing idiosyncrasies of Mrs Blair is that she has a reputation as one of the world's worst housekeepers. Before her husband became Prime Minister, the Blairs lived in utter domestic chaos, with the creed of the slattern elevated almost to an art form. This might not be admirable, but at least it's human.

Things are different now, which is why Mrs Blair long ago stopped muddling through, and instead acquired Ms Caplin, right from the moment when her husband became party leader, as her "lifestyle guru". Or "consultant and writer in areas of health, fitness and wellbeing", as Ms Caplin told Hello! this week.

And how much better about herself Ms Caplin must be feeling . Having held Mrs Blair's hand as well as her lippy, as she guided her charge into making a spectacle of her intimate life in Marie Claire and all other media, Ms Caplin herself chose the easier option of a fully styled interview and shoot in - and on the cover of - the celebrity-fawn title Hello!

There she is, at exactly the same time as the pictures of Mrs Blair's own disastrous PR exercise hit the news stands, inviting all who care to into her own lovely home. It, of course, is pristinely tidy, marred only by the constant presence of a cheesy young woman in a giddying plethora of figure-hugging outfits. My own favourite is one of Ms Caplin in split-sided leather trousers and barely-there white top, perched on shag pile and cushions, staring challengingly into the lens.

It's not the picture in itself so much as the hilarious contrast with the quote from Ms Caplin that adorns it: "There's no special man in my life at the moment. I've been sobered and subdued by the events of the past eight months and I still haven't had time to recuperate at a private level."

No wonder Ms Caplin hasn't had time to recuperate at a private level. She's spent the last eight months recuperating at a wannabe-celeb-on-the-make level, with any dignity or integrity cast gleefully to the wind, and the bad old media, for whom Ms Caplin's real job title is too long, embraced like a long-lost client.

The "events of the past eight months", of course, refer to the revelation that Ms Caplin's boyfriend, the con-artist Peter Foster, had assisted Mrs Blair in the purchase of flats for Euan Blair to live in while at university. This curious story was fanned into savage life by the Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday, two newspapers which had a field day exposing not only the dodgy dealings of Foster, but also the supposedly sinister hold Ms Caplin had over Mrs Blair.

Tales about shared showers, chatting with the other side, cults and primal mud-wrestling were served up for more national gaiety, alongside tattle about Ms Caplin's former existence as a topless model (which appears to amount to one set of photographs) and present incarnation as a purveyor of new-age flim-flam. Much of it, to be fair to Ms Caplin, bore only a fleeting resemblance to the truth. As a means of setting the record straight, Ms Caplin and Mr Foster co-operated with a BBC documentary crew to make a film they hoped would offer a more appealing side to their story. It did not.

Meanwhile, Mrs Blair's clumsy attempts to protect Ms Caplin and Mr Foster had precipitated a crisis. The upshot was that Mrs Blair made another excruciating media appearance, again emphasising that she was just a working mother like the rest of us, while Ms Caplin had a miscarriage and broke up with Mr Foster. One might imagine, therefore, that Ms Caplin would maintain some animus against Associated Newspapers, the architects of what would look to most people like something of a downfall.

But not Ms Caplin. Instead she actually signed up with the newspaper group in question, and now earns a massive amount of money writing a column for The Mail on Sunday that plugs her "consultant and writer in areas of health, fitness and wellbeing" company, Lifesmart, going to those gossip-column generating events that public relations people get away with calling "parties", and appearing on the This Morning show doing much the same thing. In fact, gushes her agent, since that disastrous time, "the offers have been flooding in". Every cloud, eh?

For Ms Caplin, everything is coming together. There can be little doubt that she has always hankered after fame. In her teens and early 20s, Ms Caplin tried modelling, singing, dancing and fashion, all areas that can deliver a young woman who is pretty and lucky a glamorous, high-profile life. And Ms Caplin did get within reach of the lifestyle she craved. She may not have found fame herself, but she did manage to attract some famous boyfriends, including the pop stars Adam Ant and Gary Numan.

But this sort of limited success didn't give her what she was looking for in life. As she told Hello!: "I was a very rebellious young woman and I felt defeated and became very angry. As a result I put on a lot of weight - three stone or more - and I got very ill. I had ME which I eventually got over; and I had candida, which is a yeast infection."

This was what triggered Ms Caplin's interest in health, fitness, nutrition and alternative therapies. Her mother Sylvia, who had been a ballet dancer, was already involved in this then-burgeoning, now-massive industry, and had been a personal trainer to Jane Fonda, Felicity Kendall, Mia Farrow, Daley Thompson and others.

Mother and daughter had always been close. Ms Caplin was born in 1961, and her parents divorced when she was two and a half. A gambler and a womaniser, her father left to live with a girlfriend in South Africa. Sylvia Caplin brought up Carole and her sister Nicci alone, battling with ill health as she did so, but still managing to build a following for her Covent-Garden based exercise classes.

Sylvia Caplin has drawn quite a bit of attention herself during the course of her daughter's rise. She's the one who is really committed to crystal healing, and is perhaps less media-savvy than her daughter when chatting about higher powers, the evil of caffeine and the importance of washing your hands before you wash your face. This last really is professional advice from the Caplins.

The mother and daughter set up their first fitness and lifestyle advisory consultancy in the 1980s, calling it Holistix, and it was her attendance at Holistix classes in the late 1980s that began Cherie's friendship with them.

The relationship has certainly endured, even though Alastair Campbell and his partner, Mrs Blair's former advisor Fiona Millar, are both said to have disapproved of Ms Caplin's advice and intimacy. Nevertheless it looks like the 40-year-old guru has seen off both these heavyweight operators.

It does seem certain that Mrs Blair's reliance on Ms Caplin is rather overwhelming, and people find it disturbing that a supposedly strong and liberated women needs such a crutch. Sources close to the Blairs have repeatedly claimed that Mrs Blair is totally dependent on Ms Caplin for advice on her appearance, and also relies on her for emotional support. It can only be concluded, judging by Mrs Blair's steadfast loyalty through all the controversy, that this is indeed the case.

All the same, the comparisons that are made between the influence of Ms Caplin on the Blairs and that of Rasputin on Nicholas and Alexandra seem somewhat overstated. Certainly Ms Caplin's best piece of lifestyle advice to Mrs Blair would undoubtedly be to ditch the lifestyle guru. But Ms Caplin is no more acting out of self-interest than most people in knowing which side her bread is buttered.

And yes, it's a little bit pathetic that Mrs Blair needs such bolstering over things that shouldn't matter much, like her make-up and clothes - which, Ms Caplin helpfully told Hello!, were planned with military precision six months in advance. But Mrs Blair's entire life has been characterised by her desire to do her best, and shine as much as she can.

As far as the press is concerned, Mrs Blair can't do a thing right. Poor Mrs Blair is in a role she isn't suited for, at a time when women are judged by each other more than ever on the cut of their dress, the shape of their hips, or the state of their manicure. Her great flaw, hidden for so long by her achievements, is that she won't admit defeat. Mrs Blair doesn't seem to have the confidence to say, "Hang it, I'll do it my way." Instead she seems hell-bent on doing it Carole Caplin's way, and the only person reaping any benefit from this is Carole Caplin.

Life story

Born

1962. Grew up in west London.

Family

Daughter of Sylvia, a ballerina, and Michael, who imported fur skins. Her parents divorced when she was two and a half. She has a sister called Nicci.

Education

Comprehensive school in Fulham

Boyfriends

Adam Ant (she appeared as a courtesan in his video for 'Prince Charming'); Gary Numan; Peter Foster (she miscarried the conman's baby in December 2002).

Career

Shop assistant in a boutique; dancer with short-lived band Shock in 1981; brief stint as a glamour model, posing for the Daily Star and appearing on the cover of Men Only; set up Holistix, a lifestyle advisory consultancy, with her mother in the 1980s; personal trainer at the Albany gym in Regent's Park; met Cherie Blair 1992; photographed at Cherie's side at the 1994 Labour Party, conference and described as her 'personal assistant'; owner of LifeSmart, a 'health, fitness and wellbeing company'; Mail on Sunday columnist.

She says

'I've been sobered and subdued by the events of the past eight months.'

They say

'What's that woman doing in here?' - Alastair Campbell, on seeing Ms Caplin emerging from the Blairs' private Downing Street apartments in 1997

'The fate of the entire Blair premiership lies with Carole Caplin.' - George Galloway