All I'm interested in is this ward. I don't care what's going on in any other ward, or abroad. Is that very bad? Am I supposed to say that?"

Today, the Sheridans are at home in Cardonald, which is midway between Glasgow and Paisley. Here, as Gail says without a hint of irony, you get the best of both worlds, with everything you could possibly need on your doorstep: Bellahouston Park, Braehead shopping centre, Ibrox stadium. With their daughter Gabrielle, who will soon be seven and attends the local primary school, they live in a comfortable end-terrace house on a busy street.

On the kitchen table are plates of pie and beans, lunch for Tommy and the couple's friend, Kenny, a firefighter, who is helping Gail in her campaign to become a councillor. The wall-mounted television is turned on to BBC 24 which is showing Rupert Murdoch's inquisition at the Leveson Inquiry, which Tommy, who fell foul of the News of the World's "dark arts'', is following as a hound does a fox. Elsewhere on the wall are cartoons and family photographs, including one of Gail as a teenager at the Vatican bending the ear of Pope John Paul II.

Gail leads the way into the sitting-room, with its sanded floors, twin sofas and television the size of Arran. Often described as "redoubtable", she is immaculately made up, with a helmet of blonde-streaked hair. She is wearing jeans, a sweatshirt and trainers, having just returned from a morning's canvassing in the rain and seems upbeat, talking 19 to the dozen. "I'll need to watch what I'm saying now," she says when the recorder is switched on.

She is standing on a "Solidarity and anti-cuts" ticket in a ward in which four out of 10 candidates will be selected on Thursday. She has stood twice before for the council, once as a no-hope "paper candidate" and once when she came perilously close to getting elected. As she was working at the time it was not something she had bargained for.

How well she will do on this occasion is anyone's guess. Gail jokes that, including family and friends, she can depend on at least 50 votes. If she gets fewer, she indicates, questions will need to be asked.

In her favour, none of the other candidates has her profile. As she tours the ward, she is recognised, and invited to inspect gardens or have a cup of tea. Van drivers honk their horns and give her a thumbs up. "I have no hesitation in recommending Gail to the voters in Craigton," writes Tommy on the leaflets she puts through letter-boxes, "and not just because she is my wife."

Though born in Govan, Gail has lived much of her life in Cardonald. She met Tommy at nearby Lourdes Secondary School when she was 13. For the past 10 years she has been vice-chair of the community council. "I love this area," she says, "and I'd fight tooth and nail for it. Whether I'm elected or not, if something was going on I'd be poking my nose into it. All I'm interested in is this ward. I don't care what's going on in any other ward, or abroad. Is that very bad? Am I supposed to say that?"

Tommy's conviction for perjury in December 2010 has not been an issue on the doorsteps, she says. On the contrary, people constantly greet them in the street which, she says, can be a bit of a nuisance when you're just trying to get the messages. "But it's never in a bad way. It's always the opposite."

But she does, she says, get fed up seeing Tommy constantly referred to a "disgraced politician" or "sex mad", as he was in the Sun a couple of days earlier. On the plus side, says Gail, it makes a change from him being described as "sun-bed loving" or the "sun-bed socialist".

It is four months since Tommy was released, having spent a year in prison, after being given a four-year sentence. Gail does not need much prompting to revisit what she calls the "nightmare" of the trial when she stood alongside her husband in the dock. "Nothing can be as bad as those three months," she says of the trial in the Glasgow High Court.

After Tommy was found guilty there was a three-week period, in late 2010, which he spent at home while awaiting sentencing. Reporters and photographers laid siege to the Sheridans' home from Christmas Eve to Boxing Day. On Christmas Day, recalls Gail, from about 9am, they started coming to the door. "We noticed they would do it on the hour or half hour. Obviously we didn't open the door."

She says one reporter even mouthed to Gabrielle to open the door. "Things like that were going on the whole of Christmas morning." Normally, Gail, a devout Catholic, would have gone to mass but that was not an option. She would watch Tommy watching Gabrielle playing with her toys and burst into tears.

"We didn't know how long it was going to be," she says, of Tommy's sentence, "because the way things were going I was thinking it could be 50 years because he was public enemy number one. But we knew he was going away for a long time."

WHEN she says "we", she does not include Gabrielle. She was never told her father was in jail, rather that work kept him away. There was some relief when he was finally sentenced. For Gail, who had to sit through witnesses testifying that her husband had visited a sex club in Manchester, nothing could be worse than the trial and its immediate aftermath.

When Tommy was despatched to Barlinnie, she says, "I just thought get on with it. Just get on with it now. There's nothing we can do now. And there's nothing else they can to do to us now. It's been done. They've done their damnedest. They've done their worst."

Now she faced visiting him in prison, which was a "new concept". Tommy had twice previously been jailed, in 1992 for attempting to prevent a warrant sale and in 2000 for non-payment of a fine imposed after a protest at Faslane naval base. But on the first occasion Gail and he were not a couple, on the second he was only in for a few days. This time was different. "It was not very pleasant," Gail says. "I never, ever took Gabrielle. I made that clear to Tommy. It was not up for discussion."

Her obduracy echoes the woman who told the court when Tommy sued the NoW for libel that if he had cheated on her he would be "in the Clyde" tied to a piece of concrete and she would be charged with his murder. She does not appear to be someone who would stand by her man irrespective of what he had done.

Sometimes Gail went to Barlinnie with her "daddy", an experience both would gladly have foregone. As the big doors clanged at the end of visiting time, toddlers would run towards them crying for their daddies. What made it bearable for Gail was the other wives, every one of whom seemed to know who she was. And they all said their man's cell was next to Tommy's. "I began to wonder how many there were in that cell," she says. "It was hilarious."

Meantime, she busied herself around the house, gardening, decorating, looking after Gabrielle. "I thought, just get on with it. There's nothing else you can do. He's no' murdered anybody or anything like that." In July 2011 Tommy was moved to Castle Huntly, an open prison near Dundee, and allowed home visits.

Just get on with it. If Gail Sheridan ever needs a motto she has one. Surrounded by a loyal group of family and friends, she seems able to deal with whatever is thrown at her. Tommy, she's come to realise, is the sort of man who will never be out of the public eye, who will divide opinion and who will never duck controversy.

In taking on the News of the World, many felt he was foolhardy, biting off more than he could chew, and unprepared for what was to follow. In his opinion he had little option. He had been libelled and had to fight it. But his subsequent conviction for perjury must have tested his and his wife's resolve – and their marriage.

Once, says Gail, not long after she and Tommy married, she spotted a man and woman sitting in a car in the street opposite her house. Hours passed and as she hung out her washing, Gail tried to imagine why they were there. Eventually, the woman came to the door, which Gail rushed to open, thinking her caller was in trouble. "Are you OK?" she asked. The woman was a News of the World reporter and her companion was a photographer. There was a rumour going around, the woman said, that the Sheridans had split up. "Would I be hanging out his shirts if we had?" asked Gail.

She still finds it hard to comprehend such behaviour. And she would not be human if she did not find satisfaction in the demise of the NoW. Inch by inch, the phone-hacking scandal is creeping north. Tom Watson, the Labour MP who has done much to expose malpractice at the tabloid, said he thinks Tommy's conviction looks "increasingly unsafe".

But Gail does not want anyone to go to jail. "I really don't want that," she says, though her view may not be shared by Tommy. "I just don't care about them. They're loathsome, horrible people, right. But I cannot wish that on their weans and their wives and their mums and dads.

"You know what would be enough for me? If something was done about his conviction. For me, if his conviction was quashed that would be worse for them."

gail sheridan on local politics, the press and resuming married life by alan taylor