Mo Mowlam was one tough, feisty lady, who could be pretty ruthless when she felt she needed to be, writes Frank Millar, London Editor.
The stereotype image that attached itself to her in the early days in office, and clung to her after her unhappy departure from it, told less than the whole story.
Mo might have given New Labour its "touchy-feely" reputation, but the former Northern Ireland Secretary was no soft touch.
She assumed the Stormont hot seat in 1997 probably better prepared for the task than anyone before her or since. A "woman's woman" in the still male- dominated world of politics, she succeeded in that rough trade where so many fail - by making a real difference to peoples' lives.
The tributes paid to her yesterday were in no way diminished by their repetition from across the political spectrum.
Neil (now Lord) Kinnock got it right when he said Mo was the embodiment of courage. He was not referring solely to her long battle against cancer and her death at the young age of 55.
The former Labour leader was celebrating, rather, the characteristics Mo brought to her politics - "approachability, single-mindedness, gutsiness and ferocity" - and which she then made a force for public good.
Lord Kinnock was speaking with the insight of the man who first brought her on to Labour's front bench Northern Ireland team in the early 1980s. That experience was to stand her in good stead years later when she became shadow secretary of state in anticipation of New Labour's electoral triumph in 1997.
Mo's instincts were almost certainly "greener" than she found prudent to admit. Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness was correct in divining the "humanity" which would have equalled ready recognition of nationalist grievances in the North.
Yet as former Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble also recalled, Mo Mowlam - armed with the all-important backing of Tony Blair - shifted Labour away from the notion of being "a persuader for Irish unity" in favour of the principle of "consent" for future constitutional change, without which there would never have been a Belfast Agreement.
Mo would never have made such a claim. However, it might well have taken a good deal longer without her commitment. A combination of factors had brought republicans to contemplate an end to conflict, yet the peace process was frustrated through the dying years of a Major government perceived (though this was exaggerated) to be dependent on unionist votes at Westminster.
Crucially, it was Mo Mowlam who persuaded republicans and the Irish Government that Northern Ireland would be a priority for an incoming Blair administration. And she delivered. As one senior Irish diplomat said at the time: "You just knew Mo not only talked the talk, but that she would walk the walk."
In doing so we can also probably venture that she shortened her own life. Looking back now, it seems remarkable that she should have been calling me soon after 8am most mornings of the week to discuss Northern Ireland while being driven back from her hospital treatments.
Yet when she finally confided the detail of her tumour it hadn't seemed remarkable at all, just so typical of Mo. She really was a one-off.