Thirties: Katie Kay, next-door neighbour

'He would sit by the pool and devour books'

Katie Kay has known Blair for 20 years, since they were neighbours in Hackney in the 1980s. She is now his special adviser with responsibility for his diary.

Kamal Ahmed
guardian.co.uk, Sunday April 27 2003 01.08 BST
The Observer, Sunday April 27 2003

We [Katie was at that stage married to Barry Cox, the deputy chairman of Channel 4] first met Tony and Cherie when they moved into a set of four newly renovated Georgian houses in Hackney. It was a great mixed area, eclectic.

We moved in within weeks of each other and got to know them very well. We were in and out of each other's houses for a glass of wine and some food. At the end of the garden, backing onto us, was Charles Clarke [now the Education Secretary] and his wife. Charles was working for Neil Kinnock at the time. A lot of their friends and ours at that time were political.

Then, over time we started to go on holiday together, to either Italy or France. The thing that struck you was that Tony was a great reader. He would sit by the pool and devour books. He was a great reader of the Bible and other serious books. He got enjoyment out of the solitude of just sitting quietly and reading. He also loved sitting outside in the courtyard and would talk to everyone who went by, for hours. He was a great mucker-in, with the cooking, the washing-up. We used to have a mini-Olympics in the pool, possibly more splashing then swimming.

Tony was a lark not an owl. He used to wake up at the crack of dawn and would carry Euan [his eldest son who was at that stage a few months old] and put him in a baby bouncer and read books and drink coffee - four hours later we would come down and find him. He was always very much a morning person.