Tamara Mellon: a character assassin in high heels

Sporting a pair of the four-inch crocodile-skin stilettos that have helped her build a £200m business, Tamara Mellon matched her killer footwear with a surgical court-room assault on her former husband.

The co-founder of the ultra-chic Jimmy Choo shoe brand was at London's Southwark Crown Court yesterday to describe Matthew Mellon, the American-born heir to a £3bn fortune, as an insecure ex-drug addict who behaved "like a child" and needed a "nanny" to cope with daily life.

In a devastating hour-long critique of her marriage, combined with a media-friendly exposition of her Prada-to-Yves St Laurent wardrobe, Mrs Mellon said the 43-year-old banking and oil scion was "totally incapable" of managing his finances and was so absent minded she was reluctant to leave him alone with their four-year-old daughter.

The evidence on the private life of the couple, a one-time fixture on London's A-list party circuit, came on the seventh day of Mr Mellon's trial for allegedly hiring a private detective agency to hack into her computer during their divorce.

Mrs Mellon told the court how she received emails offering to assist her in ending her marriage. The emails seemed to contain comp-romising photographs of her husband and his assistant. When she became suspicious of their validity, she passed them to her company's computer expert. It was found they contained a sophisticated "Trojan" virus designed to record all keystrokes on a keyboard.

Aware of the publicity surrounding the case, Mrs Mellon made sure that photographers gathered outside the court in south London had reason to follow her every move as she turned up in a pair of £2,000 high heels.

The 37-year-old entrepreneur, who used a £150,000 loan from her father to turn a little-known east-London cobbler into a global brand, told jurors she had met her husband in 1997 at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting while they were both recovering addicts. They married in 1999 at Blenheim Palace during a celebrity studded wedding, but the relationship fell apart and divorce proceedings began in August 2003.

Mrs Mellon said: "A day doesn't go by when Matthew doesn't lose his keys, his mobile or even his wallet. For a long time I didn't want him to be alone with our daughter just because he is so absent-minded. I wanted him to be supervised even though he is fantastic with her. He is too absent-minded to be alone with her. Being married to Matthew was like having another child."

She agreed with Mr Purnell that Mr Mellon, who was taking medication for manic depression, needed "a nanny", "a mother" and "a best friend".

It is alleged the emails sent to Mrs Mellon were sent by an American hacking expert, Marc Caron, who had been employed by a City based detective agency, Active Investigation Services (AIS), which was co-founded by Jeremy Young, 39, while he was a serving police officer on long-term sick leave.

He has already pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges. Mr Mellon is accused of paying AIS nearly £12,000 to snoop on Tamara. He denies a single charge of conspiring to hack into computers between July 2004 and February 2004. A further five co-defendants involved with AIS variously deny 15 counts of conspiracy to defraud, unauthorised interception of computer material and criminal damage.