Arianna Huffington: Queen of the blogs

Arianna Huffington isn't listening. For the first half of our interview she's been charming and polemical and surprisingly revealing. But now - absent-mindedly - she picks up the phone and starts doing an interview with a radio station. "You don't mind, do you?" she flashes an apologetic grin.

Welcome to Arianna world. But then Huffington - founder of online news and comment website the Huffington Post - is not like other women. I've spent a day shadowing her in New York as she promotes her latest book, On Becoming Fearless, part memoir, part self-help book. A tall redhead, dressed in exquisite shades of beige and taupe, Huffington has the figure of a woman half her age. In her book she describes how she finally kicked the dumpy gene into touch by hiking, meditation and healthy eating.

Her critics say she has reinvented herself more times than Madonna, but she tells me the book is her rawest, most confessional yet. It covers rejection in love, her miscarriage, her daughter's battle with anorexia, and her anger at being condescended to by male politicians.

Huffington is a media phenomenon. She charms and she woos. Her schedule is insane. At her "salons" you'll find Diane Keaton, Nora Ephron and Jane Fonda. Bloggers on her site, which draws three million readers a month, include Norman Mailer and David Mamet. She's been called ruthless, "the most upwardly mobile Greek since Icarus", yet she is funny and stylish - and a fantastic advert for the fiftysomething woman.

It wasn't always thus. Back in the early 1970s, when she was living in London, she was a figure of fun. Critics mocked her Greek accent, her wardrobe and her boyfriend, journalist Bernard Levin. (They met when he was 42, she 21.) In 1971, she enraged feminists when she published The Female Woman, a counterblast to The Female Eunuch.

Today the thesis of the book - that feminism must accommodate women's "special needs" around motherhood - stands up rather better. But at the time she was public enemy number one. Worse still, Levin wouldn't marry her. But rather than pining away, she went to America and reinvented herself.

At 30, she became a New York "It" girl and the author of controversial biographies of Picasso and Maria Callas. She married an oil millionaire - Republican Michael Huffington - had two daughters and became a political wife. But 11 years later, they separated, and her husband came out as gay.

Huffington rallied. She gained a reputation as a spiky columnist and sketch writer. She briefly flirted with political office, campaigning against Arnold Schwarzenegger in California in 2003. But it was the Huffington Post - founded in May 2005 - that saw Huffington come of age as a political polemicist. Today it's the fifth most popular site online, where bloggers vent their feelings on everything from bringing US troops home to Paris Hilton's jail sentence. It also breaks big stories such as Judith Miller and the CIA leak scandal.

None of the 750 bloggers is paid but they get immediate visibility. "It's more intimate as a medium. You don't have to have the polished phrase. In fact one of our guidelines to our bloggers is 'first thoughts, best thoughts'."

Today she is fantastically rich, due in large part to her failed marriage. But growing up in Athens in the 1960s, life was tough. Her mother left her philandering father and Arianna and her sister grew up in a one-bedroom apartment. She dreamed of going to Cambridge after seeing a picture in a magazine. When she won a scholarship there at the age of 16, the whole family moved.

She was "freakishly tall", with a thick Greek accent and glasses. But she persevered and became president of Cambridge's debating union. Later, when she realised her accent was alienating Middle America, she hired a voice coach - albeit one who worked on the movie Forrest Gump.

On Becoming Fearless is her 11th book. It aims to teach women how to overcome negative self-talk. "We all have an inner critic, what I call the obnoxious room-mate in our head."

The other impetus for the book was her frustration at the Bush administration's use of fear as a weapon. She thinks Tony Blair's association with Bush was a tragedy. Barack Obama is the new crush. "As the editor of the Huffington Post, I will not be endorsing any candidate, but I have written with enthusiasm about the inspiration that Obama has provided to so many people who are deeply cynical about politics."

Huffington changed political affiliation in the late 1990s, inspired by left-leaning friends and her belief that the Republican Party does not do enough to help the less fortunate. "I believed we could create a country where the private sector would step up to the plate and huge fortunes would be given to inner cities. And I found out first hand how difficult that was; a lot of the same friends I had gone to to raise money for the opera were now turning me down." Ten per cent of her own income goes to charity.

Not that she is flawless. During her husband's Senate race, it was revealed she had an illegal nanny. She rails against SUVs but takes a private jet. During her run against Schwarzenegger, it emerged that she had paid only $771 in taxes in the previous two years.

Her mantra is "irreverence with a purpose". Even her old enemies are blogging for her these days. She never lies about her age. And she has a Pollyanna-ish ability to look on the bright side. "My great disappointment was that Bernard Levin didn't want to marry me. I was devastated. But I joke that I really am here now because some man wouldn't marry me." In fact when Levin had Alzheimer's at the end of his life, she was one of his carers.

Today she lives in LA with her sister Agapi and her daughters. As for fearlessness in love - she is single. Yes she goes on dates, but it would take a strong man. "I think it's got easier for me to know early on if a relationship has a certain lifespan - and not try to extend it beyond that."

For Huffington the personal is political; she wants us to build up fearlessness antibodies. "You have to be willing to acknowledge new evidence and information," she insists. "The alternative is to be a fanatic."

Biography: From Greece to California

Born Athens, 1950, the daughter of Konstantinos (a journalist) and Elli Stassinopoulos.

1966 Left Greece at the age of 16 with her mother and sister Agapi so she could attend Cambridge University. Graduated with an MA in economics.

1972 Moved to London and lived with the journalist and broadcaster Bernard Levin.

1980 Moved to the US.

1986 Married reclusive oil millionaire Michael Huffington and moved to Washington.

1992 Helped Huffington to become a congressman.

1996 Left the Republican Party.

1997 DivorcedMichael Huffington after he came out as gay.

2003 Ran for governor of California as an independent against Arnold Schwarzenegger.

2005 Co-founded news website the Huffington Post.

2006 Named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine. Lives in a $7m mansion in Brentwood, California, with her two daughters, Christina, 18, and Isabella, 16.