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New age ties of the ex-topless model and the PM’s wife

ReligionNewsBlog.com • Sunday December 8, 2002

Cults and cures litter career of Cherie’s friend
The Guardian (England), Dec. 6, 2002
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
Jeevan Vasagar

Carole Caplin’s CV could not be more different to that of Cherie Blair’s, yet the leading lawyer and the topless model turned personal trainer have formed a strong bond.

Despite her conventional professional success, the prime minister’s wife has a fascination for new age therapies, and this forms a central theme of the relationship.

Ms Caplin, 40, is Mrs Blair’s personal fitness trainer and a friend. But reportedly she also recommended the prime minister’s wife to try a succession of alternative therapists, including Bharti Vyas and Ms Caplin’s mother, Sylvia, who is said to commune with the spirit world on her clients’ behalf.

It is also claimed that Ms Caplin not only takes Mrs Blair through personal training and gym work at a health club in Regent’s Park, but also shops for her and gives her nutritional and fashion advice.

The two women are believed to have met at a gym in 1992, two years before Tony Blair became leader of the Labour party.

Ms Caplin also took Alastair Irvine, son of lord chancellor Derry Irvine, under her wing when he expressed interest in becoming a fitness trainer.

She has been dating conman Peter Foster since the summer, and was pregnant with their child until this week, when the couple announced she had suffered a miscarriage.

There was a minor scandal in 1994 when it emerged that Ms Caplin – described by the press as Mrs Blair’s personal assistant, though this has been denied by Downing Street – had been a topless model and once appeared on the cover of Men Only.

But greater concern has been expressed about her involvement in the 1980s with a cult called Exegesis. This was a new age cult accused of brainwashing recruits, who paid £500 a time. It was denounced in parliament as “puerile, dangerous and profoundly wrong”.

She became involved with the cult as a “sentry” at meetings, where recruits were encouraged to reveal shameful sexual secrets. Some of those involved were reduced to hysteria.

Prior to her association with the cult, Ms Caplin had attempted to succeed in showbusiness. She was a dancer with a group called Shock, which lasted for a year in 1981.

She left Exegesis in the mid-80s, and, with her mother, set up her own company, Holistix, which she described as a “revolutionary health and fitness system”. She also wrote a Holistix book, which advocated the benefits of goat’s milk and plenty of sex.

But despite its client list, which included Felicity Kendal and Gemma Craven, the business did not prosper.