Cherie Booth is taking part in a new Channel 4 programme to tackle weapons crime among young people. Photograph: Channel 4
While the headlines have all been about her autobiography, Cherie Booth has also been busy this week as chair of Channel 4's Street Weapons Commission.
Given the ambitious task of coming up with a strategy to combat the rising numbers of children involved in gun and knife crime, she and her fellow commissioners are travelling the country to try and get a sense of the picture on the ground. My job, writes Alexander Gardiner, is to turn all this into a series of programmes for Channel 4.
It's a world away from Downing Street as Cherie and the other commissioners meet people who deal with the impact of street weapons on a daily basis, from chief constables, social workers and youth leaders to the kids themselves.
It never quite turns out how you predict. Hearing a reformed gangster bemoaning the moral decline of society and how life on the streets today is more chaotic than anything he knew certainly makes you sit up and take notice.
In this week's visit to Birmingham much of the focus was on grassroots organisations trying to offer kids alternatives to gang life. I was surprised by the levels of their frustration. They sense there is money swirling around to tackle the young excluded, but can't understand why so little of it comes their way.
Barbara Sawyers, whose son Daniel was shot dead in a case of mistaken identity, spoke with eloquent rage about how she feels used by those who approach her to "pimp" on his death when making grant applications, never to be heard of again. In her view lots of money is squandered on ill-conceived schemes created by these articulate bandwagon jumpers with no real value-for-money audits done on their outcomes.
But there is a real problem as many of these more effective grassroots projects depend on the sheer force of personality of one or two charismatic individuals. Take them out of the equation and the project withers on the vine.
I was really struck by Kirk Dawes, a former police officer so tough he looks like he could punch you into next week if he tried. He's taken lessons from the Northern Ireland peace process and is trying to bring them to resolve the conflicts of Birmingham gang culture. His mediators come from the community they serve and the police credit them with playing a significant role in cutting the number of gang related murders in the city from 27 in 2002 to two in each of the past two years. The trouble is, take charismatic Kirk out of the picture, and I'm sure these angry young men would be far less likely to take notice.
This idea that it's all about getting the right people to do the job was put well by Marc Edwards, a former gang member now leader of an outreach group, the Young Disciples. As he puts it: "If someone has a snake bite, they use the same venom to treat the problem." Get the wrong people (ie the middle class) and little is achieved.
But given the scale of the problem, there can never be enough reformed "snakes" to go around. So what are the grassroots projects that can be easily replicated? Our search continues.
Alexander Gardiner is executive producer of the series for Channel 4. The Street Weapons Commission is open to submissions at streetweapons@channel4.com.
