She is the former mistress of Lord Asher and Gordon Ramsay. She has written a book about her life experiences as a professional mistress called "Having an Affair? A Handbook For the Other Woman."

Symonds, who left school at 16, was 22 when she went to visit her older brother in Abu Dhabi in 1992.

Sitting in the bar at the Sheraton Hotel, she was offered a job there as a "European sales executive". It was her entry into the high-octane, wealthy world of Arab sheiks and businessmen and, one must suspect, a lot more murky business.

By 1997, she was back in London, living a tiny bedsit in Pimlico and working as a £15,000-a-year banqueting co-ordinator at the Royal Overseas League in St James`s.

It was during a fundraising event at the House of Lords that she met Lord Archer, then running for Mayor of London, and embarked on a brief affair which was later exposed in a Sunday newspaper.

She tries to airbrush him away with the words "big mistake", adding with a laugh: "He`s not the only one who`s an author now, anyway."

Over the next couple of years, her career moved towards PR. She worked for a company leasing luxury Mayfair apartments. Many of their clients were wealthy Middle-Eastern businessmen and celebrities, and Symonds found herself regularly jetting around the world on business.