Flashguns and tears as `that woman' hits town

THEY HAD queued for ages - the star-struck, the sad, and the merely curious. They thronged in their hundreds to see Monica Lewinsky. It was bound to come to tears, and of course, briefly, it did.

Some had been up before dawn. Others had elbowed their way to the front of the line that snaked around the books department at Harrods in London.

At the front, Anne Kersey, 39, a local Knightsbridge housewife, revealed with pride that she had also been the first to sign the Book of Condolence for Diana, Princess of Wales, at St James's Palace in September 1997. It was that sort of queue.

Ms Lewinsky was always going to be a big draw, but surely no one guessed that her appearance at the first signing of her biography, Monica's Story, would have been quite so mad. So hundreds of people were squeezed together, stumbling into books on the history of Cairo and Iranian art, as they waited for the woman who called the United States President "butt-head" and to whom he referred as "that woman".

Timothy Harris, 33, of Sacramento, California, said: "I think she has been dragged through the wringer, so all power to her. If she gets a pound or two of mine from her book that is fine by me."

The object of Mr Harris's generosity appeared at 12.30pm with a nervous smile for the hundreds of flashguns. Ms Lewinsky signed copies for the first five people, then the cameras were cleared and she left the room.

There was a murmur in the queue. Was she all right? There was talk of her wiping away tears. Was she coming back?

Indeed she was. Twenty minutes later she reappeared, while the Harrods spokesman explained away her "touch of flu". With that, Ms Lewinsky took her seat at a large oak table and began with gusto to sign her name for the next 395 lucky customers.

Later, speaking to The Independent, Ms Lewinsky said she had been overcome by the event: "It's very bizarre. To lose your anonymity is something I would never before have imagined... I am here to help promote a book, Monica's Story, but it is not a very happy story. It's hard to handle." She said she was optimistic about the future. "In the long run I hope to certainly get married and have kids."

Will her notoriety hinder her? "Definitely. Definitely," she said. "It would take a really very, very strong, unique individual I think, who could move forward with me in that manner...

"More often than not I regret having had this affair with the President. There are some days I regret the entire relationship and ever having met him, and there are some days I just regret having told Linda Tripp."

And what had she learnt from her experiences with "Handsome"? "Not to have an affair with a married man."