'I can almost say thank you to Al Fayed'

CHRISTINE and Neil Hamilton are a couple about whom most people have an opinion. Mention the Hamiltons and you'll always get a groan or a guffaw, never a shrug of indifference. ''Some people can't stand us, but that has to be their problem,'' says the formidable Christine. ''We are in the 'love them or loathe them' category.''

Some believe that since they faced financial ruin over the cash for questions storm in the 1990s, they have become "panto dames", accepting every media offer that comes along, no matter how demeaning or humiliating. Christine, now 55, who has become the main breadwinner, prefers to describe herself as a "media butterfly".

Love them or hate them, they have come a long way since Neil was declared bankrupt in 2001 after landing himself £3m in debt after a series of failed libel actions against Harrods boss Mohamed Al Fayed, who accused him of taking cash for questions in the Commons in the 1990s.

Since his bankruptcy order ended last year, the Hamiltons have sold their Cheshire home for £1.15m (half of which has been paid to their lawyers, according to Christine), Neil has started an employment consultancy in London, they have bought Bradfield Manor - a grand 15th century house near Malmesbury in Wiltshire - for £1m, and in February they won undisclosed damages from publicist Max Clifford over "highly offensive" comments he made concerning false allegations of sexual assault made against the couple.

''He despises us,'' says Christine. ''I don't think my feelings against him are as strong as his against us. He has contempt for us but I don't give two straws.''

Much of the money they have clawed back has come from Christine's hard graft on the celebrity circuit. She was not declared bankrupt, so her earnings could not be touched. Critics have described them as greedy, but no-one has ever accused Christine Hamilton of laziness.

''We turn down quite a lot of television things, like Wife Swap and On The Farm. In the early years we thought, 'What are we going to do?' and we did things then that I would not in a million years do now but we needed the money,'' she says, frankly.

Since their problems first started and her Tory MP husband lost his Tatton seat in Cheshire in 1997, Christine has appeared on countless shows (often with Neil), including Have I Got News For You?, I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? She has also jumped on the after-dinner speaking bandwagon and is always in demand at celebrity parties. The couple have also appeared naked as Adam and Eve for GQ magazine (with body stockings and strategically-placed greenery), opened an Erotica exhibition in London and done the rounds of Christmas pantos.

Christine has welcomed cameras into her home, most notably the journalist Louis Theroux, who was in the middle of filming when the shocked Hamiltons were falsely accused of rape.

Their accuser, Nadine Milroy-Sloan, ended up going to prison for three years for perverting the course of justice but the Hamiltons have never received an apology from the police.

''The whole arrest business was devastating. We still haven't got to the bottom of it. It's mind-boggling. I think she was mad, bad and dangerous to know," says Christine. ''The invasion of privacy was horrendous. It was humiliating and demeaning. Six policemen searched our house for three-and-a-half hours, another six searched the flat, another six searched the car. They took our computers, they helped themselves to anything they wanted. It was a total violation. Even when I think about it now I get incredibly angry about all that.''

Now, Christine is popping up in gossip columns again over the publication of her autobiography, For Better For Worse, in which she reveals, among other things, that she had a one-night stand with former Sunday Times editor Andrew Neil and several affairs with married men in her earlier years.

''I've always been attracted to older men and still am,'' she laughs. ''It's not something I'm proud of. It was just the headiness of youth.''

She met Neil when she was 18 at a Conservative student conference at Swinton Park, near Ripon, in North Yorkshire, and, after dumping him once, took up with him again several years later and worked as his secretary for many years. It's a conundrum that her bright, forthright approach should gel with his more reticent, slightly eccentric personality.

To many, Christine is seen to be the dominant one in the duo, but she says: ''We are a completely equal partnership. I just happen to be a bit louder.

''I'm much more extrovert. He's quite reserved, whereas I leap into the room like an over-enthusiastic Labrador and bound up to people and slobber all over them, while Neil will hold back a bit more.

''I'm much more volatile and emotional. He's very 'lawyerly' and analytical about things. If it hadn't been for the difference, we'd have never got through all our nightmares because I couldn't have coped. I would have collapsed emotionally. He just kept his eye focused on the target.''

It is no secret that Christine likes a drink and she admits that during the worst times she drank more than was good for her.

''I've never been anywhere near being an alcoholic but there have been times when I was drinking far too much. Talk about wasting time. I've wasted days and weeks of my lives through alcohol. At one stage I was drinking three bottles of wine a day. Neil used to try and stop me. I just had to get a grip.''

However, unlike other media butterflies she has never sought therapy for her woes. ''What would I do with therapy?'' she quizzes, genuinely bemused.

Christine agrees that the many court battles over the years have stopped her living life as she would have hoped. ''But you can't worry about that. As John Lennon said, life is what happens when you're making other plans. If I look back at the amount of time utterly wasted, fighting libel actions, fighting the police, fighting this, fighting that, the hours that we've spent in not being able to enjoy life, we have missed out.

''But the other side is we've had opportunities to do things that we would never in a million years have done. I've almost got to the stage when I say, 'Thank you Fayed, thank you Clifford'. At 50 we were able to completely start again and we really do have an enormous amount of fun.''

The couple made a conscious decision not to have children and Christine doesn't regret it.

''We've been accused of being materialistic and selfish, which is rubbish. It would undoubtedly have changed our lives out of all recognition.''

For now, it's media business as usual. Most recently her Battersea flat has been home to a make-over team for the Five show, How Not To Decorate.

In the future she would love a chat show of her own. After all, she says, she's far more interested in other people than she is in herself.

* For Better For Worse, by Christine Hamilton (Robson, £16.99)