The admirable Mrs Hamilton

She talks to Women's Editor Christen Pears about her transformation.

THERE are people who say I shouldn't, but I just can't help it - I like Christine Hamilton. I've been expecting the quintessential Tory wife, a legendary battleaxe, a woman with no qualms about demeaning herself to make a quick buck. Instead, I find her warm, funny and ebullient. Her no-nonsense manner and complete lack of pretension endears her to me within minutes.

When someone tells her she looks younger than she does on television, she doesn't hesitate before saying: "I have to tell you, darling, I've had some help." And she goes on to outline the treatments she's had - always at the behest of journalists wanting to write articles about makeovers for middle-aged women. It's the sort of publicity she can't afford to turn down.

Christine is at Middlesbrough's Cleveland Centre to launch a new reward card for shoppers. Her husband Neil is in tow, although he remains firmly in the background. He, too, is charming, with an almost schoolboyish eagerness to please. The pair have just had their teeth whitened and when Christine asks him to demonstrate the effect, he obliges at once, flashing his grin around the room for all to see.

Appearing at shopping centres is standard fare for the Hamiltons these days. The disgraced Tory MP and his wife seem to be permanent fixtures on the minor celebrity circuit, and later in the afternoon they're speeding up to Aberdeen to speak at a business dinner. It's fairly tame compared to some of their other public appearances - posing naked for GQ magazine or donning stockings and suspenders in The Rocky Horror Show.

"I think we're extremely lucky to have been able to start again and leave behind the boring, beastly world of politics," says Christine. "You never know what's going to happen next and it's great fun."

Fun it may be, but it's also a necessity for the couple, whose finances were left in ruins following their failed libel action against Mohammed Al Fayed, the man Christine calls "The Egyptian Grocer".

In 1994, Neil was accused of accepting envelopes stuffed with cash from the Harrods boss as payment for asking parliamentary questions. Whatever the truth - and Neil has always protested his innocence - it effectively brought an end to his political career and, in 1997, he was ousted from his parliamentary seat by former BBC war correspondent Martin Bell.

It was during the election campaign that Christine first came to public notice when she ambushed Bell on Knutsford Heath in the Tatton constituency, challenging him to say whether he thought her husband was guilty of any wrongdoing. Previously known only as Neil's wife and secretary, she achieved notoriety overnight.

But while it has brought her a fair degree of derision and ridicule, she has also been able to turn it to her advantage, capitalising on her image to offset the couple's debts. After Neil lost his seat, she published a book entitled Great British Battleaxes. She didn't conceal her motives. "We wanted to do something for the Christmas market...we need money now," she said.

With regular television appearances, including a stint in the Australian jungle in the first series of I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!, public perceptions seem to be changing.

"I think people have seen that we're just ordinary people. Extraordinary things have happened to us but we're not the ogres that we've been painted as," she says.

Having said that, there don't seem to be any limits to what they'll do to remain in the public eye - "If it's legal, we're up for it!" - and some people find that hard to stomach.

But perhaps it's understandable. The couple suffered trial by media over the cash for questions affair and now they're simply earning a living from it - and they do see it as earning a living rather than a soft option.

"There was a time when people asked what we did and we would say we were professional objects of curiosity, but that's changed.

"When we were in panto, we weren't just the drop-in celebrities. We worked hard at our roles and we got rave reviews. We don't take ourselves seriously but we take what we do very seriously and people wouldn't keep asking us to do things if they thought we couldn't."

Christine has just finished filming a ten-part series on interior design for Granada and all next week she'll be appearing on This Morning, commentating on the second series of I'm A Celebrity...

She admits she's feeling rather nostalgic at the moment; she clearly enjoyed her time in the jungle. "I don't mind roughing it," she says, and you can't help but believe her. She's the sort of woman who could survive anywhere and anything - something she puts down to her ability to block out the bad times, as well as a fair measure of alcohol and adrenaline.

She and Neil are also sustained by their relationship. The couple met at a conference of the Federation of Conservative Students in the 1970s, although it was 13 years before they married. She's been steadfastly loyal, both as a wife and secretary, and says the marriage has only been strengthened by their ordeal. We can only assume that her very public attack on Martin Bell was simply her way of defending her man. Certainly, Neil doesn't seem as forceful as his wife, although she insists they have an equal partnership.

"We don't have to work at it. We can take each other for granted in the nicest possible way."

So what are they like when the cameras are turned off? Exactly the same, if Christine is to be believed.

"We have good days and bad days like everyone else, but it is what you see is what you get. If people don't like it, it's their problem not ours. I'm 53 now and Neil's 54. We're too old to change."

Over the last couple of years we've seen enough TV coverage of their private lives to draw our own conclusions. When the couple were accused of indecently assaulting Nadine Milroy-Sloane they were making a fly-on-the-wall documentary with Louis Theroux. They could have postponed filming but allowed the cameras to follow them. Cynics accused them of cashing in on the allegations but they don't see it like that.

"We had to make the decision whether to take Louis to the police station with us or not and we decided that because there was going to be so much media interest anyway, that we would. Afterwards, we joked that we had to do something to save Louis' flagging career - but we had nothing to hide and we wanted people to see that."

One of the refreshing things about the Hamiltons is that while they court publicity, they understand that it can work against them.

Christine says: "There are times when I do long to be anonymous and I get a bit fed up with all the unnecessary snide comments, but I can't really complain. We didn't seek it but we do live our lives in the public eye and we can't cherry pick."

And with that, Christine applies a slick of lipstick, Neil dons one of his trademark bowties, and they head off into the shopping centre.