No fewer than 150 guests attended Friday’s festivities including politicians, TV celebrities, socialites, Westminster fixers and multi-millionaire businessmen
They proceeded to a silk-lined marquee for a three-course dinner followed by dancing
Blairs love to get bargains and Bobby Davro performed for free instead of usual £4,000 fee
No matter how many homes they own, or how limitless the extent of their wealth, one fact remains eternal: Tony and Cherie Blair love few things in their gilded lives quite so much as a freebie.
How else can we explain yesterday’s bizarre revelation that as the death toll in Gaza passed 1,050, the Middle East peace envoy and his wife were treated to an after-dinner performance by the comedian Bobby Davro?
Davro, who the other day jokingly described himself as ‘the only 1980s TV entertainer yet to be nicked by Operation Yewtree’, made the unexpected appearance at a lavish party held to celebrate Cherie Blair’s 60th birthday.
He strode onto the dance-floor, microphone in hand, and proceeded to execute what friends describe as an ‘uncannily realistic’ impersonation of our former prime minister, singing If I Ruled The World, from the musical Mr Pickwick.
The surreal turn was the highlight of an astonishing night in which Mr Blair, whose mission is to secure peace between Israel and the Palestinians, found time to ignore one of the bloodiest crises in recent Middle East history.
Guests may have expected a couple with the stratospheric wealth and influence of the Blairs to stump up for a bona fide A-lister to grace the vast marquee at South Pavilion, their £6 million grade I-listed pile in leafy Buckinghamshire.
Yet to political observers who have long followed their affairs (and shopping habits), Bobby Davro’s musical interlude in fact fell into a lifelong pattern.
For I can reveal that the couple — who controversially secured cash discounts on everything from holidays to luxury flats and designer handbags during their Downing Street years — managed to secure the services of the pantomime star for free.
‘Yes, it’s true: Bobby did not get paid for Friday night,’ says Siovanya Bond, Davro’s manager. ‘There was no fee. He was asked to do it for a favour.’
The booking of a man who usually charges up to £4,000 for a public appearance, was, I gather, arranged at short notice by a wealthy and extremely well-connected friend: Stephen Purdew, the owner of Champney’s health spa, where Cherie is a regular visitor.
We’ll return to Mr Purdew later. But he is understood to have personally telephoned Davro on behalf of our former prime minister on the day of the event.
‘It was all very last minute,’ says Bond. ‘Bobby was asked to do it that very morning. He phoned me right away that he was going to be singing for Tony and Cherie. I thought initially that he was winding me up. You never know with Bobby.’
As to the actual performance, Bond adds: ‘He opened the set pretending to be Tony Blair. He sang a few songs, and did his impressions. Then he did some stand-up. Bobby was thrilled to be there, and says it went down very well. He does a lot of corporate stuff these days, and tailors his gags to the audience.
‘On the comedy circuit, he can be quite near the knuckle, but for this audience he decided to keep it clean. From what I gather, it was that type of garden party.’
Indeed it was. No fewer than 150 guests attended Friday’s festivities, including politicians, TV celebrities, socialites, Westminster fixers and multi-millionaire businessmen.
After drinks amid the manicured lawns and trimmed hedges of South Pavilion, they proceeded to a silk-lined marquee for a three-course dinner followed by dancing.
The dress code was the New Labour uniform of lounge suits (with no ties) for men, and cocktail dresses for ladies. Spotted in the well-turned-out crowd were former Labour ministers Keith Vaz, Dame Tessa Jowell and Lord Reid of Cardowan, along with the Labour leader Ed Milliband — who has spent recent months bemoaning Britain’s ‘cost of living crisis’ — and his wife Justine Thornton.
