CHRISTINE HAMILTON as a bossy battleaxe fairy and husband Neil as a guileless impoverished king? Talk about typecasting.

As if the Hamiltons' lives weren't enough of a pantomime already, the former disgraced MP, and his domineering wife will be treading the boards at Guildford's Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Jack and The Beanstalk from December 13 to January 5.

In a threadbare backroom at the Guildford School of Acting, Neil and Christine took a break from rehearsals to talk about the latest unlikely, but fittingly comic twist in their surreal life story.

Their first foray into the world of panto is the result of what Neil describes as a "chance remark" that three days later led to the pair, whose only previous theatrical experience has been a recent Rocky Horror Show production, signing up for 46 performances.

Christine, charm itself and frank almost to a fault, jokes: "I signed up to be the good fairy but without so much as a by or leave my part's become the bossy fairy battleaxe."

Neil, characteristically, getting his word in second, adds: "I'm the Impoverished King Neil, King of Merrydale, the put-upon victim of the evil giant, but I wouldn't like to say I'm typecast. I play a bumbling old fool, so that really tests my acting abilities."

The interview isn't two minutes old and already Neil - bankrupt, he says, with debts of £3.5 million, with most of the money earned from his celebrity/notoriety going to creditors - is alluding to his nemesis Mohammed "Al" Fayed, the Harrods boss.

Christine reveals with relish: "The really jolly thing is that Guildford is the local pantomime for where he (Fayed) lives, in Oxted, and if he comes to the pantomime he will discover that it is about an evil giant who oppresses the king. The giant is loaded and he owns a football club and a cornershop in Knightsbridge."

Neil still insists he's innocent of cash-for-questions allegations and is appealing to the European Court of Human Rights.

Casually dressed, the Hamiltons are in ebullient form; so ready to talk candidly about what must still be painful events that a list of questions seems almost redundant.

So who wears the trousers in their relationship?

The initial response, from Christine, naturally, comes as no surprise. "Darling, I do, of course! As long as Neil does as he's told everything's fine."

She claims that her domineering character is a myth and says: " I play up to it. But I'm the noisy one. I'm outgoing. Neil's just a bit shy."

Christine also admits being an outrageous flirt and batting her eyelashes at Loius Theroux during that documentary.

"Of course I did. I flirt with everyone and nobody who knows me would have been surprised by the way I reacted in the jungle programme (I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here) But the public were surprised."

The bizarre nature of the Hamiltons' recent years reached new heights during the filming of the Theroux programme. What began as a quirky fly-on-the-wall documentary became a media circus when, during filming, the pair were arrested for indecent assault.

Christine recalls: "When that sex thing happened last year you really did think 'I cannot believe this. It's so extraordinary', even by our standards and the fact that we had Louis Theroux in tow, well, surreal is just the word. But what is heart-warming is that there has been a change in public perception because it showed us how we really are. We're just normal human beings. I drink too much and will flirt with anything in trousers and he (Neil) tells tasteless jokes."

"I suppose one becomes accustomed to it," adds Neil. "The abnormal becomes the normal."

Christine adds: "We've been through hell. We've emerged. We've hung on by our fingernails while the torrents were trying to sweep us away. We've refused to go over the waterfall. We're now enjoying a renaissance."

Christine rebuts the charge that they will do anything for money.

"If it's legal, honest and vaguely decent we'll do it. This is a job and we wouldn't have agreed to do it if we didn't think we could carry it off."

Neil, whose lack of comments in this interview are in part because of his quieter nature, and also because he spent some of it answering the relentless trill of a mobile phone adds: "We're very lucky in our fifties to be able to make a go of a new career so ostentatiously."