No final reward for wife at heart of Tory sleaze

Christine Hamilton has always been portrayed as the most loyal of Tory wives. But it is in her role within the cash-for-questions affair that the Hamiltons' adage "We Do Things Together" really applies.

For at the end of almost every strand of the sleaze allegations, it is possible to find Mrs Hamilton. She is at the epicentre of what has been called the "web of influence" that prompted the Downey inquiry into her husband's downfall.

A long-time Commons secretary, she introduced her husband to professional lobbyist Ian Greer, whose business empire collapsed in the aftermath of the "sleaze" scandal.

She also introduced him to her former boss, Sir Michael Grylls, who was censured in Thursday's report for "deliberately concealing" payments received from Mr Greer.

At York University, one of her best friends was the future Tory MP Michael Brown, who was also strongly criticised in Thursday's Downey report findings for failing to register introduction payments from Mr Greer.

The report found that Mr Brown had also failed to declare an interest in Skoal Bandits, a banned American chewing tobacco for which he had lobbied - along with Neil Hamilton.

It was Mrs Hamilton's signature which appeared on the receipt from the Peter Jones department store for a set of expensive garden furniture paid for by Mr Greer.

And it was Mrs Hamilton who booked the room at Mohamed al-Fayed's Paris Ritz which set the sleaze allegations in motion - and where she and her husband charged a total of pounds 2,500 in extras and room service to their room.

When the couple asked if they could return to the hotel, to be told by the irritated office of Mr Fayed that it was full, it was Mrs Hamilton who phoned the hotel and humiliatingly discovered that rooms were in fact available.

During the run-up to the general election, in which Mr Hamilton lost his Tatton seat to "anti-corruption" candidate Martin Bell, many observers remarked upon Mrs Hamilton's seemingly genuine sense of outrage that they should be hounded for such apparently small misdemeanours.

"We've made mistakes," she once said of the Ritz allegations. "But show me anyone who hasn't. Tony Blair and John Prescott both enjoyed jolly weekends at Gleneagles. There was nothing wrong in their going but by doing a similar thing, Neil's been made out to be appallingly corrupt."

Of their acceptance of Mr Fayed's "hospitality", she said: "The fact that someone owns an hotel should not stop him having private guests."

But then Mrs Hamilton's fierce sense of loyalty - and perhaps her unusal sense of propriety - can be traced all the way back to her first job in the Commons.

Until his death in the early 1970s she worked as secretary to the flamboyant Tory MP for Kidderminster Sir Gerald Nabarro - and still sports an impressive portrait of him in the drawing room at the Hamiltons' home in Nether Alderley.

It was as his secretary in 1972 that she endured her first spell in the media spotlight. As Christine Holman, she stuck loyally by Sir Gerald when he was convicted of a dangerous driving offence in what was at the time a notorious case.

When the conviction was overturned six months later, she was photographed weeping and hugging the MP, clutching a piece of lucky white heather.

Loyalty - even then - had its rewards: he gave her a gleaming blue Mini, with the registration plate NAB 4.