Want to see a naked picture of my ex?

Lorena did it with a kitchen knife; Craig Brown's ex did it with an answerphone tape. Kate Mulvey celebrates revenge

SEVEN YEARS ago I joined the ranks of the vengeful vixens - and it was the best thing I ever did. I was going out with a handsome director from a prominent ad agency. He declared his love and took me on weekend trips to the best country house hotels. But in between trips to the Caribbean and cosy nights in with the video, he was also giving his personal assistant a good seeing to.

When I found out, I was not only hurt and bewildered, but I felt used and belittled. I had two options; shut up and nurse a broken ego like a good girl, or get on the bitch garb, retaliate, and get it out of my system. I chose the latter.

I was fortunately in possession of incriminating evidence. Mine only had the power to ridicule, not to destroy. We had taken nude pictures of each other (well, lovers do these kind of things) and I was in possession of the film. In a moment of uncontrollable rage - and let's face it, when you're hurt, your judgement is distorted - I sent copies of my lover's naked little body to all his clients and his colleagues.

He was duly ridiculed, and became the butt of many crude jokes for months to come. I felt great. You may say how amoral, how cruel, but the philandering playboy deserved everything he got.

Aren't women awful? Poor Craig Brown (right), the Scottish national team football coach who may lose his job after being accused of bigotry (a charge he vehemently denies), was dumped in it by none other than his aggrieved ex-girlfriend, Lynda Slaven. She says she kept tapes of Brown singing sectarian songs into her answer machine, and when she found out he had been cheating on her, sent them to the News of the World. Ouch!

For nearly five years, Brown kept two lovers in tow, lavishing his affections on both 54-year-old church elder Phyllis Kirk, and 48-year-old primary teacher Lynda Slaven. When Lynda found out, she called him a cheat and a liar and, somewhere between wanting to do an extreme Lorena Bobbitt and shaking her head in anger, she opted for a subtler revenge. Gone are the days when women sat back and got on with the knitting as their men charmed and smarmed their way into their secretaries' beds. Women are doing it for themselves - revenge that is.

The notorious instances are becoming urban myths: the woman who cut up her husband's Savile Row suits and got the entire village drunk on the contents of his wine cellar. Margaret Cook, who took pen to paper when her husband, the Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, went off with his assistant.

The days of the cringing wife who stands meekly by as her husband goes philandering, and then comes back for scones and sympathy, are over. Perhaps outing your lover as a bigot and risking his job is going too far, but revenge is often the only recourse women have. As Lord Byron says, revenge is sweet - especially to women. It seems that revenge, the cold and calculating kind, is a particularly female preserve. Could it be that the fairer sex hides a Machiavellian and cruel interior? I don't think so. Maybe the reason is that women are very good at it.

For a start, we have had years of practice. Whilst young boys find out who is the leader of the gang by fighting it out in the playground, young girls create a hierarchy by using their verbal skills. As we grow up without recourse to fighting, a young woman hones her verbal and manipulative talents until she can outwit or out manoeuvre a man any day.

Instead of shouting and rutting, a woman shows her claws and goes for the jugular, not with a broken beer glass down the pub on a Friday night, but with a strategically planned course of action. Lynda could have called him a philandering bastard and thrown a glass of wine in Brown's face, but he would probably have laughed and increased his kudos down the bar as a right old lady-killer.

No, the man's Achilles' heel is his professional reputation. Make him look a fool in the work place, and you have got him where it hurts. I know.

So all you Casanovas out there, as you pen a romantic ode to your secret lover, before you congratulate yourself on a jolly good plan, check the mail or the work noticeboard. You never know what part of your anatomy may be pinned up there.