Blair confesses: I wear glasses at home

BILL CLINTON has a pair, so does Michael Douglas and even Clint Eastwood. Now, like other ageing icons of male virility across the globe, Tony Blair has admitted that he, too, wears specs.

Cherie's pregnancy may have put a spring in his step, but even the Prime Minister cannot avoid the ravages of time and has finally confessed his guilty secret. The Ayes may have it, but the eyes have had it.

Clearly hoping that voters make passes at men who wear glasses, Britain's latest specs symbol has "come out", to use his phrase, about his eyesight in an interview with Woman's Own magazine.

It all began one night in the Blair bedroom. "Cherie started saying to me in bed, `You're looking at that book very strangely'. I used to be sort of squinting at it," he explains.

Mr Blair, 46, has been diagnosed as long-sighted. He fails to reveal whether his specs are of the Jeffrey Archer half-rim variety or the Christopher Biggins-style saucers.