I have no intention of buying , or even browsing , Cherie Blair's awful tome, Speaking For Myself. But hands up I found myself in an idle moment today reading extracts on the internet and had a strange sense of deja vu.
Some years ago, a friend of mine came across Tony Booth's 1989 vintage autobiography, Stroll On, at a jumble sale.
And, largely as my paths have crossed with the Booth dynasty over the years (I once briefly worked for his third wife who was a journalist and he was a "regular" on the Manchester Evening News Diary pages) I did cast an eye over it in some detail. OK, I read it.
What was remarkable was the man's absolute lack of discretion about his private life. The book recalls with glee his "crumpeteering " days with stories of shinning up drainpipes, in and out of various women's beds, and lots of indulging in drunken sprees - one of which nearly killed him. This was pre-Blair days so not much mention of Cherie or his famous connections. That would come later in the hastily-cobbled together sequel, What's Left.
To be fair, when the book was originally written, Tony Booth was more famous than his daughter and he had never exactly pretended to be a saint.
However, it's quite extraordinary that his daughter seems compelled to earn a few extra pennies with graphic details of her first date with Tony, the completely unnecessary details of her contraceptive arrangements, and tittle-tattle about Gordon Brown. Will all this make the book a best-seller? Doubt it.
I would have thought a woman in her position would have a modicum of self-respect and not need to tout such rubbish. It is all, I'm afraid, tawdry, tacky stuff which reads just like a chip off the old block.......
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