Byline: GEOFFREY LEVY;GORDON RAYNER
THE fact that the two women were wearing almost identical boots - white and very pointed - said much about their closeness. By the time Cherie Blair and her 'friend Carole' arrived for this week's gala preview of Chelsea Flower Show, the Queen and all the other royals had left.
The Prime Minister's wife carried nothing more than a programme in one hand and a white rose in the other, while her friend carried a capacious handbag, rather in the style of a royal lady-in-waiting. They sauntered through the crowds, laughing and chatting like sisters.
To Cherie, the Queen of Downing Street, it was just another public engagement. But for Carole Caplin there was an added significance in the warm evening.
For this was her unofficial Dimmable LED Down Light K1018 2x3x1W / 2x3x3W 'coming out' as Cherie's invaluable companion and aide, the real guru in her life, whose closeness to the Blairs is said to have caused Alastair Campbell some sleepless nights because of its potential to harm the family's conventional middleclass image.
Ms Caplin, as students of the Blairs may recall, is the former soft-porn model-turnedlifestyle consultant and fitness trainer who first appeared as a pivotal figure in Cherie Blair's life during the Labour Party conference of 1994, when her husband had just become party leader.
In recent times, however, anyone asking No 10 about Carole's role in Cherie's life is told, as we were again this week, that she is merely Cherie's 'personal fitness trainer and a friend, but not a personal assistant'.
But what a friend. Carole, now 40, not only takes Cherie through personal training and gym work, often several times a week, but also shops for her and gives her nutritional and fashion advice, as well as taking almost personal charge of her wardrobe, right down to valeting.
And despite official denials from No 10, informed figures insist that she also advises the Prime Minister about diet and other matters.
Other brands jewellerySO JUST how influential in the lives of the most powerful family in the land is this attractive, energetic woman?
Certainly, she is influential enough for some New Labour wags to refer to her as 'Cherie's Rasputin'.
'Not in the malign sense, of course,' one says, 'but Cherie does seem to hang on to everything she recommends.' It was Carole who recommended the alternative health guru Jack Temple, an 85-year-old former market gardener, to Cherie when she had swollen ankles.
Mr Temple dowses for 'poisons and blockages' with a crystal pendant and also offers a homeopathic alternative to the MMR injection, insisting that children who are breastfed do not need it.
Leo Blair was, of course, breastfed by Cherie, sometimes in front of friends and guests.
The Blairs still refuse to say whether Leo has had the injection, which some parents believe is linked to their children's autism, on the grounds that it breaches his privacy.
It was Carole, whose early ambition was to be a Page 3 girl and appeared on the front cover of the girlie magazine Men Only, who also recommended Cherie to the soothing but controversial alternative therapist Bharti Vyas.
Mrs Vyas's treatments include holistic patches, magnets which balance the body's rhythms, and the Hindu therapy of Ayurveda, which aims to balance the body's three 'h
