Britain's Cherie Blair says never admits mistakes

LONDON, May 27 (Reuters) Just days after British Prime Minister Tony Blair made headlines admitting errors in Iraq, his wife Cherie today said she too had made mistakes but did not like to talk about her gaffes.

During the nine years her husband has been in power, Cherie Blair has been skewered in the press for everything from her political comments to her choice of friends.

In an interview with the BBC she said it would be ''arrogant and foolish'' to say she did everything right.

When pressed about mistakes she said: ''I don't own up to them publicly. I'm never really in a situation where it gets to that.'' The latest unwelcome spotlight shone on her this week when she was criticised for signing a copy of the official report into a government scientist's suicide which was then offered for auction at a fundraiser for the ruling Labour Party.

When challenged in parliament about his wife's move, Tony Blair said: ''I do not believe that any offence to anyone was intended.'' Blair himself was notably contrite this week when he and President George W. Bush openly admitted mistakes over the Iraq war during a White House press conference on Thursday.

But Cherie Blair forcefully dismissed criticism when asked about her 7,000 pound hairdressing bill during the last election, saying ''Honestly what a load of fuss about trivia''.

A prominent human rights barrister who herself bid to become a parliamentary candidate, she was once picked in a poll as the person Britons most wanted to deport.

Her penchant for New Age remedies, and her friendship with style guru Carole Caplin and Caplin's then Australian fraudster boyfriend Peter Foster titillated the media while her comments on policy have outraged politicians.

In 2002, she provoked a row when she said young Palestinians had ''no hope but to blow themselves up,'' speaking hours after 19 Israelis were killed by a suicide bomb. Her comment outraged opponents of Blair's government.

She was savaged in the newspapers and reduced to very public tears over what was dubbed ''Cheriegate'' convicted conman Foster helped her buy two apartments in southwest England where her eldest son was at college.

But YouGov pollster Peter Kellner had sympathy for her position, telling Reuters: ''It is a difficult balancing act. There are no rules. This has never been done before.

''This is the first time we have had a prime ministerial spouse who has not only had her own career but had one which involves having a public face as a barrister.'' And he said the contrast with former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's husband Denis could not be more stark.

''You will recall that when invited once to speak at a White House dinner, he famously got up and said 'Like Mark Anthony entering Cleopatra's tent, I have not come here to talk.''' REUTERS SY PM1653