Immaculately dressed and smiling brightly, Mrs Cherie Blair waits at a table laden with copies of her autobiography.

It is a slow Thursday afternoon and fewer than 20 people have turned up at Borders in Wheelock Place clutching books for the wife of former British prime minister Tony Blair to sign. Children and adults gawk at her from beyond the velvet barriers and she waves all of them over to take photographs with her. When the trickle dries up, she begins working her way through the stacks of books on the table, agreeing to let this journalist sit by her side as she does so.

Her 2008 autobiography is titled Speaking For Myself and the choice of phrase is pointed and deliberate. She says: 'The reason I call the book that is that from before the time Tony became prime minister, when he was leader of the opposition, everything was geared to making sure his message was getting across to the British people.'

As his spouse, she says she was under pressure for years to toe the Labour party line so as not to 'distract' from her husband.

'What we hadn't anticipated was that people would still want to write about me. There was a vacuum filled with a caricature of a woman,' she says.

Newspapers, magazines and tabloids raced to write about her favouring 'outre' practices such as feng shui and acupuncture, and dug up dirt on her circle of acquaintances. In 2003, she faced allegations of being involved in property dealings with convicted conman Peter Foster and she had to issue an apology over the matter.

A year earlier, at a charity event, she had said young Palestinians felt they had 'no hope' but to blow themselves up, just hours after a suicide bombing in Jerusalem that killed 19 Israelis. She apologised for that as well after a media uproar.

With such incidents marring the Blair tenure, when her husband finally stepped down in 2007, she felt the time had come for 'the mad woman at 10 Downing Street' to have her say in full, she tells Life!, turning amid signing books to smile. 'The book was an opportunity to put forward the case for the defence,' quips the lawyer of 34 years, who sometimes sits as a judge. She turns 56 this year.

Flak rarely daunts her for long. 'I don't read all my press - but someone always tells me,' she says.

'Tony calls me his 'bolshie Scouser',' she adds. The term means a belligerent Liverpudlian. 'When they push me down, I come up fighting.'

She agrees that she does not like to mince her words. 'I try to be diplomatic, but don't always succeed. Part of it's the lawyer training. The other part is, women like us, we're lucky to be able to speak out.'

Advocating women's rights is her pet project and the purpose of her two-day visit here was to attend the UBS Philanthropy Forum, a platform for donors and philanthropists to exchange knowledge.

Her husband's leaving the seat of power has left Mrs Blair freer to focus on the Cherie Blair Foundation For Women, created in 2008. It aims to make women in developing countries economically independent and is nurturing entrepreneurs in Africa and the Middle East. 'Once women can be economically active in society, money talks. It tends to lead to respect and give them the ability to walk away from abusive situations,' she says.

She credits her own successes to the female influences in her life - her mother and grandmother. 'My father abandoned us when I was eight,' she says bluntly. 'I was brought up by strong women who worked hard to give me and my sister the opportunities they never had.' Her father is actor Tony Booth and her mother, former thespian Gale Howard, worked in a fish and chips shop to make ends meet. Her grandmother Vera was the disciplinarian who brought up Mrs Blair and her younger sister, Lyndsey. 'From them I learnt two things: one, education was important, and two, being able to stand on your own two feet.'

Mrs Blair was the first in her family to go to college, the London School of Economics, where she studied law. She met her future husband while they were both doing their pupillage with lawyer Alexander Irvine. She would prefer to be known as 'Cherie Booth', the name she uses in her law practice, but has become resigned over the years to being known as 'Mrs Blair'.

She uses that clout on the campaign trail for friends and family and just on Sunday made an appearance in Yorkshire to support her stepmother, Steph Booth, a candidate in the current elections. Pointing to the cover of her book, she says: 'I'm proud of Tony and happy to use his name as I do here.' She jokes: 'I started out life as the daughter of someone - my father is a famous actor - then the wife of someone and I'll probably end up the mother of somebody!' She and Mr Blair have four children. The youngest, Leo, turns 10 this month.

During Thursday's chat in Borders, she reveals that she is taking a plane that night so that she can spend time with Leo over the weekend and get him ready for school. While stressing that 'women should have choices', she thinks it is important to balance family and career. 'I think having a strong family enables me to do the things I do,' she says.

Her advice to young women is: 'Always seize the opportunity. When in doubt, take it, do it. You can always retire and lick your wounds later.' She herself has no plans to retire - not at all. 'Maybe I'll slow down, but not today.'

On her tombstone, she says, she hopes to have these words engraved: 'She tried to make a difference. It's up to you to judge if she did.'

This article was first published in The Straits Times.