Carole must have known her film would damage Tony – so why is she still Cherie’s best friend?

In the media age, life is a soap opera. For a time we are obsessed with a particular storyline. Then it is resolved, we move on to the next story, new characters are introduced, and the old characters on whose every word we once hung are phased out and forgotten. Two months ago the country was convulsed with ‘Cheriegate’, and it seemed that nothing else in the world mattered. Day after day the tabloids and broadsheets screamed their headlines, which said that Cherie was not telling the truth and that the Prime Minister himself was threatened. Pages one to ten were cleared. Andrew Marr and Adam Boulton camped outside No. 10. Then Peter Foster made his statement, in effect exonerating the Blairs, and we moved on to something else. It is only two months since all this happened and yet to me it seems like two years. I know I was involved in hostilities, and must have tossed the odd hand grenade, but without looking up the cuttings I cannot remember precisely what happened.