Tony Blair admits mistake to British Olympic chief

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair has admitted he made a mistake.

Blair has written to the British Olympic Association’s Sir Craig Reedie with an apology, and a volume of his memoir A Journey, with the sports grandee’s name this time spelt correctly.

During his time as chairman of the BOA, Sir Craig was a driving force ensuring that a British Olympic bid for 2012 was based on London – the only city acceptable to the IOC – and had proper government support.

In his book, Blair mentions the historic 2005 IOC meeting in Singapore, where London won the bid for the 2012 Olympics. But Blair got at least one important detail wrong.

According to today’s Charlie Sale diary column in the Daily Mail, IOC member Sir Craig contacted publishers Hutchinson to request that in reprints he “could be described by his correct name rather than Craig Tweedie”.

Had Blair confused Sir Craig with a senior member of the family of Cheryl Tweedie (the X Factor‘s Cheryl Cole)?

Sir Craig received a swift response from the publishers, including a note from the former Prime Minster, “apologising for his error, which he blamed on his long-hand account of the London 2012 bid”.