Cherie Blair loses charity trustee Cherie Blair told Mandrake last year that she hoped her charity would win a share of Britain's £8 billion foreign aid budget. It has, however, lost the services of one of this country's leading businesswomen. No one at the organisation, which the forthright wife of Tony Blair founded in 2008 to promote "the sustainable empowerment of women and girls in the developing world," was available to comment on the departure of O'Driscoll, 52. Last year, Henriette Kolb, the chief executive of the charity, insisted that it was "impossible for Cherie Blair to be a 'hard taskmaster" ." She said Mrs Blair was not involved in the management of the organisation, but "gives freely of her time and also makes a considerable financial contribution to our work." Art of promotion Courting the boss never does any harm when there's a promotion in the offing, which may explain why Caroline Thomson, the BBC's chief operating officer, who hopes to succeed Mark Thompson as the corporation's director-general, invited Lord Patten to an exhibition at the National Gallery, of which she is a trustee. Chris Patten, who, as chairman of the BBC Trust, is in charge of selecting the next D-G, attended a private view of the Leonardo da Vinci show, as Thomson's guest. Happily, she is said to have made it through to the second round of interviews.