President George W. Bush with his wife Laura at the dinner in Washington. (AFP)

Washington, May 2: Laura Bush, the demure librarian, is no more. We may never look at her in the quite the same way again.

For the last four years President George W Bush?s sweetly smiling wife has smothered her irritation at her endlessly caricatured homespun image and played the role of dutiful ?stay-at-home? mother, pandering to the heartland?s dream stereotype of a First Lady.

But now with her husband?s second stint in the White House secured, she clearly feels free to give Americans a rather different take on the First Couple ? as she made abundantly clear on Saturday night at the White House Correspondents? Association dinner, the annual ?must-be-there? gathering of America?s media and political elites. Richard Gere, Goldie Hawn and Helen Mirren had flown in to give the occasion the sparkle that Washington?s political classes so envy.

Bush was on his feet delivering the night?s main number. For a politician who thrives on quips he was, with hindsight, slightly off key. He was launching into the Montanan equivalent of a shaggy dog story when the First Lady glided to his side.

She looked as if she was about to gaze adoringly at him, as she did so often and so successfully on the campaign trail last year. But no. ?Not that old joke ? not again,? she said with a playful smile. And, as Bush slid back to his seat, she was off, gently lampooning herself, her husband, his senior aides and then her husband again and again. ?I?ve been attending these dinners for years and just quietly sitting there,? she said. ?Well I?ve got a few things I want to say for a change.

?George always says he delighted to come to these dinners. Baloney. He?s usually in bed by now. I said to him the other day: ?George, if you really want to end tyranny in this world, you?re going to have to stay up later.?

?Nine ?clock,? she went on, pausing for maximum effect. ?Mr Excitement here is sound asleep and I?m watching Desperate Housewives. Another pause. ?With Lynne Cheney [vice-president Dick Cheney?s ultra-ideological wife], ladies and gentlemen, I am a desperate housewife.? With that, she had the packed Hilton ballroom in the palm of her hand. She mocked her husband?s hell-raising reputation in Texas where they met when she was a librarian and he was a party-loving oil entrepreneur. ?I was a librarian that spent 12 hours a day in the library. Yet somehow I met George,? she said.

She rolled her eyebrows at his love affair with his Texan ranch. ?I?m proud of George. He?s learned a lot about ranching since that first year, when he tried to milk a horse.? She paused before a distinctly earthy punch-line. ?What?s worse it was a male horse.? She poked fun at his cabinet?s war-mongering reputation. ?George?s answer to any problem at the ranch is to cut it down with a chainsaw. Which is I think why he and Cheney and Rumsfeld get along so well.?

She even risked a foray into that most sensitive of familial territories, her in-laws, playing up to Barbara Bush's reputation as a fearsome matriarch. ?People think she?s a sweet grandmotherly Aunt Bea type. She?s actually more like Don Corleone.?