In them she complained the royal staffers' practice of unpacking visitors' travel bags had prompted her to leave behind her contraceptive equipment on a second overnight visit to Buckingham Palace. As a result, she conceived baby number four, Leo.

In England this story made headlines, because of Cherie Blair's apparent lack of discretion and tawdry use of the word "contraception".

In Australia, the collective headline was simply: "Prime Minister and wife had it off in Buckingham Palace!"

I love this country.

Surely having sex as a guest in the palace is the blue-blood version of the Mile High Club? My sister and I used to get the giggles just talking about the Queen doing a royal wee, but imagine getting your rocks off in her spare room!

But perhaps Tony and Cherie's moments of royal lust weren't so much childishly impetuous as long-overdue and necessarily enterprising. After all, they were parents of three at the time (God bless them for even wanting sex) and so opportunities at home would have been thin on the ground.

Tony and Cherie would have been flat-out managing the occasional friendly text message, let alone an uninterrupted roll in the hay.

In Buckingham Palace - and I so get this - the Blairs spied an all-too-rare night off, not to mention the nation's best security keeping guard over the bedroom door. Frankly, not to have made love in that setting would have been wildly irresponsible.

I pondered the Blairs' royal dalliance when recently my husband and I attempted to share a tender moment at some ungodly hour. Yes, it was one of those special times in a marriage when, each now nursing aging bladders and all manner of stress-related sleeping issues, we successively returned from trips to the loo, tossed and turned, couldn't get back to sleep and eventually, "Soooo how about it?" we murmured.

Within seconds, a scream rang out from the toddler's room - his precious Spiderman pencil case was lost among the bed sheets.