as Penny Fox explains, the life of Lady Colin Campbell has been steeped in controversy. now she has released her autobiography

THERE is something deeply discomfiting about Lady Colin Campbell's autobiography. It may be the early references to her birth, the ensuing gender confusion surrounding her description of her ''fused labia'' and ''deformed clitoris'' which led to her early upbringing as a boy. She was George William Ziadie for many years, son of Michael Ziadie, a successful Lebanese emigre, and his wife Gloria, daughter of a wealthy Jamaican family. One of the more poignant photographs in her book is of herself, a slim five-year-old, dressed in shorts and shirt, short back-and-sides, and her sister, pretty in curls and frills and white socks. Later, in her twenties, she had surgery to rectify the physical problems. But this strange past has dogged her for many years and is, she says, one of the reasons she wrote the book at all.

That single childhood photograph is set among a selection of other black-and-white pictures: portraits of hunky men she has known; herself as a model; herself with the rich and/or famous. The latter, it has to be said, tend to be of the line-up variety - shaking hands with Prince Edward, peering over the shoulder of Margaret Thatcher - though there is one peculiarly dull back-view shot of the Queen bending over. But the intention is one of association, a portfolio of sex and snobbery which seeks to establish both her sexuality and her classiness: these are the men I have loved, these are the people I mix with.

If the gynaecological information about her birth is embarrassing, then the details she gives of her brief marriage to Lord Colin Campbell are as intimate and shocking. In this account she was the abused wife of a violent drunk who married her for her money. Take away the cash, the titles, the exotic locations, and it becomes a sordid tale familiar to Social Services and the domestic violence unit of any police station. These things are usually kept private, but Lady Colin Campbell has broken rank. She did it, she says, to counter the ''misconceptions and lies mostly perpetrated by my ex-husband and his brother'' which have accompanied her for the 23 years since her marriage. Hell hath no fury like Lady C; her anger hasn't cooled in all this time.

We meet in the overcrowded chic of her small house near Sloane Square in London. The room is packed with furniture and objects - gilt chairs losing their stuffing, small and large pieces of china - most of which have miraculously withstood the huge energies of her two young adopted sons and four very hairy dogs. Lady Colin (and there seems a terrible, double ambiguity in her retention of the title, which she has kept because ''a name is a marketable commodity'') is a slender 49-year-old with long blonde hair

and a distinctive Jamaican lilt. The adopted sons are, she says, the clue to her authorship.

''It's not fair for my children to grow up with certain things said about me that aren't true. Once I decided that it wasn't fair to the children I also saw that I had, by remaining silent all these years, allowed my ex-husband to continue abusing me by telling lies about me to the newspapers. He placed me in a terrible dilemma: if I opened my mouth I was going to violate my privacy, and if I kept my mouth shut he was going to violate my privacy and tell lies about me. I think it is an obscenity that any woman is forced to have to speak about her private parts in public, which is precisely what he spoke about.''

The tales he told were, she says, about her gender: that he started off saying she was a man, then that she'd changed sex, then that she was a hermaphrodite. The first story appeared, she recalls, in the Sunday People on December 29, 1974 (it started out, ''Last night Lord Colin Campbell revealed that his wife of nine months was once a man'') and continued in various British newspapers until she sued. Stories still appear, she says, in the American press from time to time:

''This is an infinitely preferable alternative to pursuing my husband through the courts in America. There, it's very difficult to sue, extremely expensive, very unwieldy. I have to think of myself as well, of my comforts. It's much easier just to write the book.''

Lady Colin earns a living from books. She wrote Diana in Private and The Royal Marriages, both lid-lifting, both popular here and in America. She has, she says, a personal and a professional reputation to protect, sufficient motive for writing about her own sad tale:

''I wanted all of these lies to be rebutted because that affects my earning capacity, and I have two children to support. If this book does well, great. It has its commercial advantage. If it doesn't do well commercially it has the personal advantage.''

She describes her ex-husband as stalking her in the newspapers, his motives: ''Nothing but malice. He used to tell me that if I left him he would destroy me. It's a family tradition. His father did it to Margaret Argyll, the previous Lord Colin Campbell did it to his wife, Gertrude. This is the third woman it's been done to in that family. If you dare to leave them, or dare to want to leave them, they just trash you. It's as simple as that.''

We discuss these Scottish connections, the Campbells, Argylls, and history. The gloves come off, there is no loyalty here:

''I was amazed when I married Colin and went to Scotland and saw that many Scots still deeply loathed the Campbells. A waitress refused to serve us near Glencoe, when he was ill-advised enough to drop his name. When I first heard of the rather sordid and treacherous history of the Argyll family I thought, 'Well, that's all in the past'. But it's not really. Instead of hundreds of Macdonalds being slaughtered it's just a lone wife here or there. But if you're the lone wife, you don't like it any more than the Macdonalds do. I think the average Scot will discover that all their prejudices are well-founded.

''It takes a particular form of rat to sell lies about his wife's private parts to the gutter press. Most working-class people would have too much dignity to do something as low as that but not him, not his great Lordship. Some of the aristocracy are wonderful, but for

a lot of them the only thing that's noble about them is their name. And that's certainly true of Colin Campbell and his brother Iain, in my opinion. But then again, when people have absolutely no money and want to have a decent standard of living but are allergic to work, they do extraordinary things. That's been my experience.''

The clue to all this very publicly-displayed dirty washing lies, perhaps, in Lady Colin's curious status. She is, and yet is not, part of the group to which her title belongs; she drops names like lead throughout the text of her book, and in conversation, while denying that she is a snob. She is intelligent and quick-witted, yet these qualities are somehow dissipated. She could be viewed, I suggest, as a dangerous woman, an outsider inside, and Lady Colin acknowledges that this may be the case: ''Because I only have loyalties to things that are not group loyalties''. She does not regard herself as British but as ''international'', and in that large, permanently-tanned and mobile community she says that titles count for nothing, or very little:

''I'm an outsider wherever I go. In my opinion it is the best position to be in. My original name is very well-known, it is absolutely on a par with the Dukedom of Argyll in international circles, which is not even a very good title. The only reason the title has become well-known is because of all I have brought to it. I'm the one who put the name on the map, not him. Who gives a damn about Lord Colin Campbell? Who would have heard of Lord Colin Campbell but for me?''

A curious avenging angel for Glencoe.

n A Life Worth Living by Lady Colin Campbell, published by Little Brown at #18.99.