Why are they famous?: Lady Colin Campbell

Main Claim: Aristo micro-celeb. Known for her blokey name, her provocative soundbites on matters relating to the House of Windsor, and her gender muddle of a past. Her Semi-Ladyship has now penned her life story, published next week. Once married for eight months, several decades ago, to the second son of the 11th Duke of Argyll, she has made regular appearances under her married name in the gossip columns ever since. Pretty queer, considering she loathes the man whose name she has retained.

Appearance: Well-preserved camel.

Boy Meets Girl: Lady Colin Campbell, "Colin" for short, was born in Jamaica as "George". This is because a genital malformation led to her being registered at birth as a boy. Her Ladyshipness explains the reason she was not registered as a girl: "No one recognised that I was one." As a teenage "boy", she paid a secret visit to her mother's gynaecologist, calling herself, as you do, "Betty Brompton". However, the cook ratted on her, and Lady Colin's Lebanese father turned his troubled offspring over to a "sadistic German husband- and-wife team" who were to shoot her full of male hormones. At the age of 21, having escaped to New York, Lady Colin had an operation to sign and seal her feminine future.

Boy Meets Girl II: In 1974, the minor aristocrat who shares most of Lady Colin Campbell's name swept our heroine off her feet and married her in a matter of a few days. "My daughter has picked up a drunken bum," Lady CC's father is reported to have commented. According to Lady CC, now 47, the marriage was followed by sexual failure, facial battering and the assertion that "All women are bitches." A divorce swiftly followed. Even after her season in hell, she held onto the villain's name. Would she have made it into Why Are They Famous? if she was called Georgie Ziadie? Since then, she has written a book about Princess Di and adopted a couple of Russians.

Fame Prospects: In weird colonials (Lady Colin: "I was brought up in an ambassadorial-style residence with eight servants") who re-invent themselves freak value and aristo undertones are often mixed to queasy effect. There is something brave, touching and relentless about Lady Colin. Long may she and her spooky cohorts haunt the cellars of our great British hall of fame.