Women "too nice" to ask for a pay rise, says Cherie Blair The mother-of-four was raised by her mother after her father, the actor Tony Booth, left when she was eight. "I grew up in a working-class family from Liverpool," she said. My mother was a trained actress but also spent a long period working in a fish and chip shop when my father left her. She picked herself up and got herself a career in travel. But it taught me a very important lesson - to be self-reliant. If you support yourself financially, firstly you won't have to worry about anyone leaving you, but secondly you can make choices you couldn't otherwise make. You can say no to your father, your brother, your husband or your son. Mrs Blair also talked about how she once harboured ambitions to be Prime Minister when she was a teenager and that her early life toughened her up for the Downing Street years. "When I first went to Downing Street I felt some people, especially some newspapers, were snobby about me being there," she said. But I have spent my life taking risks and pushing myself forward, and by the time I'd got there I'd learned a lot of lessons that helped me deal with that attitude. I have no regrets about my life, because it's made me who I am.