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Osama Bin Laden, the Pope and Barack Obama are among the rank outsiders to appear at Tony Blair's signing next month with a bookmaker taking bets on who will show and how many copies of Blair's memoir will sell.
Paddy Power has opened a book on the first week sales of Blair's A Journey, which is published by Hutchinson on 1st September. Blair is holding a signing event at Waterstone's Piccadilly on the 8th September.
Judging by the odds, the bookmaker is predicting Blair will sell either between 27,501 copies and 30,000 copies or in excess of 35,000 books with odds of 5/2 offered for both. The longest odds are 5/1 and are for Blair selling less than 25,000 books in his first week. The bet applies to first week UK sales of the book, which will be measured by Nielsen BookScan and reported in the Guardian by 31st October. This means the sales figure will not include those of any trade paperbacks.
The bookmaker has also opened a book on potential special guests to the Blair signing event. Cherie Blair is the 2/1 favourite with Blair architect Alistair Campbell second favourite at 6/1. New Labour titan and successful memoirist Peter Mandelson is at 16/1, joining London mayor Boris Johnson with the same odds. Also at 16/1 is Gillian Duffy, a Labour supporter famously branded "that awful woman" by Gordon Brown during the election campaign. Brown himself has odds of 66/1.
At the other end of the scale is the world's most wanted man. Anyone brave enough to put a bet on Osama Bin Laden getting a copy of A Journey signed will receive odds of 1,000-1. The Pope, Barack Obama and the Queen have odds of 500-1 for them to appear.
The sales odds in full:
Less than 25,000 5/1
25,000 to 27,500 9/2
27,501 to 30,000 5/2
30,001 to 32,500 11/4
32,501 to 35,000 4/1
More than 35,000 5/2