LONDON, Sept 29: When an 11-year-old boy sneaked his first kiss under a British railway bridge in 1965, he most likely never expected it to be front page news 40 years later. But then he did choose Tony Blair’s future wife.

Stephen Smerdon, now the thrice-married owner of a bar in Hertfordshire, north of London, woke up on Thursday to find his fledgling love life of four decades ago splashed across newspaper front pages.

It began the previous day when Cherie Blair, wife of the British prime minister, visited a map company’s stall at the annual conference of the governing Labour Party in Brighton, on the southern English coast.

After asking if a high-tech computer mapping system could display the street in Liverpool, northwestern England, where she grew up, Mrs Blair pointed to a nearby area.

“That was the first time I was ever kissed, at the age of seven. It was under the railway bridge, by a boy called Stephen Smerdon,” she told accompanying reporters.

Within a couple of hours, Mr Smerdon had been tracked down by journalists and his phone was ringing constantly.

Luckily for Mrs Blair, the target for regular media criticism over matters such as her choice of friends, her clothes and the cases she takes in her professional life as a top lawyer, Mr Smerdon had only good memories of the kiss, which he insists took place when they were both aged 11.

“I will never forget it. She was such a pretty girl,” he was quoted as saying by a series of papers.

“Every boy was after her, and I was the one that got her. Every boy fancied Cherie and maybe she took a shine to me. I certainly instigated that first kiss.”

Given their tender ages, Mr Smerdon added, he and Cherie were ‘never boyfriend and girlfriend’, which was probably just as well for the young Tony Blair.

“In those days, if you kissed a girl you thought you were going to marry her,” he noted. —AFP