The house was searched and computers taken away as evidence.”I honestly expected that by midday on the day after our arrest, the police would be crawling down the drive with roses in their teeth, saying sorry,” says Christine. “In fact, it took two and a half weeks of solid work in the media to get them to come to their senses. So in hindsight we made one big mistake and that was – although rape is an incredibly serious crime – we did not take it seriously as far as our involvement went We appeared too light-hearted.” They certainly did. Thirteen days after the arrest, for example, they both appeared on Joe Cornish’s frothy Channel 4 news programme This Week Only – hardly a dignified response to rape charges. But both Hamiltons insist they were misled as to the programme’s nature. I think their agent should have warned them off and say so.”Oh, we don’t have an agent! Or a manager!” trills Christine. “Only us!”This optimistic amateurishness is typical of the Hamiltons.

They aspire to being media manipulators; actually, their aspirations aren’t that high – they aspire to having a media career – and yet they won’t employ someone who knows how the media works. Christine is miffed because a widely used contacts book does not list her mobile phone number: she doesn’t understand that real players are unobtainable or at least hard to get hold of personally. And anyone who’d spent 10 minutes in TV would know any show featuring Joe of The Adam and Joe Show fame is a bad idea for people who want to be taken seriously.Their naivety, mixed with their can-do arrogance, means that the media regards the Hamiltons as figures of fun They haven’t a clue, really. They go to any lunch that’s paid for, any party with a stiff invite and a stiff drink.

The night before I first met them, they trotted off to a Des O’Connor book launch They seem to believe that such invitations are personal. Plus they regard all TV as, essentially, the same; as, essentially, good. Appearing on the small screen argy-bargying about politics or chatting to Esther Rantzen about mothers-in-law or playing tapes of Al-Fayed’s conversations with Tiny Rowland or giving relationship advice on The Big Breakfast or a press conference about rape charges: all good All exposure, (nearly) all money. “Look, it’s one of the means by which we earn a living,” says Neil “We’ve been falsely accused. We spend time talking to someone who is paid to ask us about it; why shouldn’t we be paid for explaining?” No wonder Max Clifford said that he sees the Hamiltons as “cartoons”: they market themselves as the shallowest of entertainment all-rounders. “Actually,” deadpans Neil, “I see us as professional objects of curiosity.” Some people say you somehow set up the rape charges to raise your profile. “There’s no accounting for some people’s stupidity,” says Neil But you do seem obsessed with being on television.