Monica - remember her? - pops up on TV

A time-traveller from a more trivial age, Monica Lewinsky, has made a comeback into public consciousness as she builds up publicity for a documentary - showing in the US tomorrow night - telling her side of the story that nearly cost Bill Clinton the presidency.

Miss Lewinsky told the CNN interviewer Larry King that she loved Mr Clinton, thought they might marry after he left the White House, and was shocked when he ended the affair in 1997.

She said she was anxious to dispel the main misconception that people have about her: that she went to Washington to seduce the president.

"I was a 22-year-old foolish kid," she said. "There was this charismatic, powerful man, who was standing there showing interest in me; and I was attracted to him, and I think I was swept up."

She described their relationship as "mutual, physical and emotional" and said she was deeply hurt when the president said she "serviced" him. "For a woman, that's incredibly degrading."

Miss Lewinsky was also anxious to make clear her regret for the hurt caused to Mr Clinton's wife and daughter.

Miss Lewinsky says she has moved on, and is now having dates (though only with single men), making handbags and studying Judaism.

Unfortunately for her, the world has also moved on since she was a global obsession.

Former Clinton staffers responded with embarrassment to her re-emergence, but the rightwing pundit Ann Coulter said: "People have to remember that President Clinton spent more time meeting this nitwit hussy than he did with the chief of the CIA."