Cherie Blair has expressed her disappointment at her former mentor, Lord Irvine of Lairg, for his drunken antics and attitudes to women.

Mrs Blair, who spent yesterday fending off calls for her own resignation from the legal profession, reveals in her memoirs that Lord Irvine would drink a “vast amount” and on occasion became “nearly comatose” in her flat. She also recounts her disappointment at his behaviour on her wedding day.

Her criticisms are surprising given that Lord Irvine, who was appointed Lord Chancellor by her husband, played a central role in her life. He selected her and Tony Blair as pupils and then took the credit for introducing them at their wedding, calling himself “Cupid QC”.

She says in her book that despite coming top in her legal exams to join the Bar, she feared that her gender was holding her back in his eyes. She wrote: “While Derry’s written style would serve me well, as an advocate he was distinctly aggressive — hardly the ideal template for a 22-year-old lady barrister.”

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She relates a tale of when Lord Irvine visited her flat in 1978 while “very drunk”. He went poking round her fridge and cupboards and managed to find an “exceptionally good, exceptionally old, exceptionally expensive bottle of wine” hidden in a broom cupboard. He opened it before she could stop him.

She calls her decision to ask Lord Irvine to speak on her behalf at her wedding “a mistake”. “It was all about Tony. How marvellous he was and how lucky I was to have him.”

The memoirs, Speaking for Myself, which appeared in the shops yesterday after being serialised in The Times, attracted criticism from a former judge, Gerald Butler, QC, who said that Mrs Blair had brought her profession into disrepute.

Speaking on the BBC Radio Four programme Woman’s Hour, Mrs Blair defended the book, saying that it was simply her chance to speak for herself after spending 13 years as the wife of a Labour Party leader. When asked if she was going to resign, she said: “I certainly won’t.”

Earlier in the week, the brother-in-law of David Kelly, the government adviser who committed suicide, said that Mrs Blair was using the death to bolster her husband’s image. Mrs Blair insisted that she had done nothing wrong. “Well, David Kelly’s death was a huge tragedy for the Kelly family first and foremost but . . . to tell the story about being in Number 10 and not to mention David Kelly I think would be actually really impossible.”

When asked at his regular Downing Street press conference about the book, Gordon Brown said: “I have enjoyed working with both Tony Blair and Cherie Blair.”

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