If Barack Obama thought the media scrutiny about his private life during the presidential campaign felt like a "public colonoscopy," chances are he is in some serious pain right now.

According to a new book, Renegade: The Making of a President, by Newsweek reporter Richard Wolffe, the Obama marriage wasn't always as peachy as it appears to be today. Describing a particularly rough patch in early 2000, Wolffe writes: "There was little conversation and even less romance. She was angry at his selfishness and careerism; he thought she was cold and ungrateful. She hated the failed race for Congress in 2000, and their marriage was strained by the time their youngest daughter, Sasha, was born. Politics seemed like a waste of time to Michelle."

Wolffe, who interviewed Obama ("quiet renegade" was his Secret Service codename) on the campaign trail for the book, also delves into the Prez's relationship with another woman -- Hillary Clinton.

Revealing that Obama made the decision to offer Hillary the secretary of state slot "surprisingly early," (before the primaries ended, predating much of the Hillary-as-VP speculation), Wolffe writes that Obama later told him: "We actually thought during the primary, when we were pretty sure we were going to win, that she could end up being a very effective secretary of state. I felt that she was disciplined, that she was precise, that she was smart as a whip, and that she would present a really strong image to the world... I had that mapped out..." with one caveat: "If Bill Clinton isn't too much of a liability."

Hillary, according to Wolffe, turned out to be the ultimate safeguard against her husband. "It's in her interests to keep him in line," Wolffe quotes one senior Obama aide as saying.

As for the Prez and his secretary of state, relations are, says Wolffe, increasingly strong. "They have both worked really hard at it," he quotes a senior White House official. "There's a natural affinity and respect that ironically grew out of being opponents. You get to know someone really well after all that."

First Ladies love to lunch

Hillary probably couldn't care less that she didn't make the cut for the Former First Ladies' Club -- but charter members Laura Bush and Nancy Reagan are enjoying their burgeoning relationship -- which is unfolding over the telephone and via handwritten letters --with Michelle Obama.

"It is really sort of like a club," Mrs Bush reveals in a TV interview scheduled to air next week. "Everyone who's been there before knows what the new person is discovering."

Among their suggestions: Michelle should host lots of parties (Nancy); keep Sasha and Malia out of the spotlight as much as possible (Laura) and take every opportunity to escape to Camp David (both).

On Wednesday, the notoriously picky Mrs Reagan visited the White House for lunch where, sources report, a crafty Michelle stacked the odds in her own favour by setting the table with the Reagan china and peonies -- Mrs R's favourite bloom. The lunch -- according to Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein and former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan, who had dinner with the former First Lady that night -- was five-star.

Melissa dishes dirt on Lowe

She seemed so sweet but actress Melissa Gilbert sure doesn't hold back in her upcoming bio Prairie Tales, due out next week.

The 45-year-old former child star (who played "half-pint" Laura Ingalls in Little House on the Prairie,) delivers a pretty devastating blow to former beau Rob Lowe when she describes how he ended their tumultuous relationship.

The couple met when Lowe was 14 and she was 17, and according to Gilbert "fell instantly, hopelessly and stupidly in love ... I felt like I was starving for Rob... He wrote me poetry. He cooed the sweetest messages into my answering machine."

Despite a few hiccups (she bedded his best friend John Cusack after hearing that he was sleeping with Nastassja Kinski), he proposed in 1986 (after a brief, highly publicised fling with Princess Stephanie of Monaco) and Gilbert discovered she was pregnant.

Nervous about how Lowe might react, Gilbert says she was nevertheless stunned when "with [Rob's] voice trembling and tears in his eyes he said very softly, 'I can't be a father'. Before I could respond, he said, 'I can't be a husband. I'm so sorry'." Days later Gilbert miscarried.

"I had lost my baby and my relationship with Rob... and it hurt like hell," writes Gilbert, who says she decided to write about the episode because "it was one of the more painful experiences in my life which created one of the biggest growing periods of my life."

Bet that's a big comfort to Lowe -- who recently settled a lawsuit with a former nanny that included charges of blackmail and sexual harassment -- his wife Sheryl and their two children.

Farrah to wed lover Ryan

Farrah Fawcett isn't ready for her final curtain just yet.

Friends of the 62-year-old actress and former star of Charlie's Angels, who has been battling terminal cancer for the last three years, say she's gearing up to marry long-time love Ryan O'Neal.

"He is the love of her life and she is the love of his life," Fawcett's hairstylist Mela Murphy said last Thursday.

Despite the fact that Fawcett appeared extremely frail in a recent documentary, Farrah's Story, which was filmed by the actress and her friend Alana Stewart and which drew over nine million viewers stateside, her friend Joan Dangerfield reports that Fawcett is rallying: Recently "she sent me on an errand to Mastro's to buy a steak and creamed corn and we came back and sat around the bed and had a little dinner".

Dangerfield says she has no doubt that Fawcett plans to be around for some time yet.

"I was wearing a really cute pair of designer boots that are on special order and she asked me to get her some. I told her it would take about two months and she said, 'Great'."

- Orla Healy