Father-in-law PM gave actor new-found fame
TONY Booth, who died on Monday night aged 85, was an actor who found new fame when his daughter’s husband became Prime Minister.
To television viewers in the 1960s he was “Scouse git” Mike, the longhaired left-wing son-in-law of rightwing Cockney Alf Garnett in Till Death Us Do Part.
Later in life he became better known for his real-life role as fatherin-law of Tony Blair - grey-haired now, but still left-wing, and, as such, an occasional thorn in the PM’s side.
A father of eight daughters including one born after a brief liaison with a radio sales girl - Mr Booth was married four times.
His third marriage was to actress Pat Phoenix, who played Elsie Tanner in Coronation Street, and died from cancer a week after their wedding in 1986.
She was said to have become the love of his life after he met her as a young man. He went out with her again in his 50s and nursed her through her illness.
He married his fourth wife Stephanie Buckley in 1998.
Cherie Booth was born in Bury, Lancs, in 1954, during his marriage to Gale Booth. But by the time she was five he had left his young family.
She became a highly-successful lawyer, later becoming a judge.
But it was her marriage to fellow lawyer Tony Blair - and his rise up the political ladder - which brought her father back into the public eye.
Mr Booth, who joined the Labour Party aged 15, did not hold back from criticising the Government after Mr Blair entered Downing Street in 1997.
In 1999 he railed against “androids” at Labour’s Millbank HQ and a year later said his daughter’s husband had stuffed the House of Lords with “Tony’s Cronies”.
He played Malcolm Wilkinson in Coronation Street from 1960-1961 and had a host of other film and TV roles during the decade.
In the 1990s he enjoyed a revival in his television career, with roles in Holby City, The Bill and Mersey Beat.
In 2004 he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and had heart problems.