Tonight:
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She's still wearing that beret. Even in a crowded park in Marylebone it's hard to miss Lucinda Ledgerwood, the blonde risk analyst fired from The Apprentice for being "too zany".
Our own Brian Sewell described her as "dressed like an amateur French tart". But in the flesh, Lucinda, 32, looks achingly young. And that wardrobe is far less pantomime. Today she's wearing a black column dress accessorised with vertiginous heels.
Ledgerwood was the contestant who least needed to win The Apprentice. Her salary already topped £100,000. A smart self-starter, she won our hearts by claiming you don't need to be a bitch to succeed. But we watched in horror as her accent and her wardrobe were mocked. Her competitors' "gang mentality" made the experience one of the "most horrific" she has encountered.
But three months on she is having the last laugh. Offers have rolled in to present TV documentaries on business and health (she has a degree in psychology and diplomas in traditional Chinese medicine and aromatherapy). Next week for four days she is cohosting the afternoon radio show on BBC London 94.9 while Danny Baker is on holiday. And Lucinda, who believed herself completely wedded to business, now has an agent, Nicky Philbin (sister of Maggie).
You can't help thinking she'll have a far nicer life than Lee, the rough diamond who won The Apprentice, currently slaving away at Sir Alan Sugar's Brentford HQ. But by embracing the media world has she sold out?
"I would hope that my motivation is not for fame or money-grabbing," she says firmly. "I have worked hard to get where I have in the business world. I wouldn't degrade either myself or others. Reputation is something you can't buy. So I wanted an agent who wouldn't chuck me into I'm a Celebrity...
"But I think it's time for a change. And when you've been through such a big process as The Apprentice things do change. If you wrap yourself up in cotton wool and go to the same job every day and keep the same routine, what's the point in being here? To push and explore, that keeps you young and vital."
She still adores Sir Alan, who sacked her "regretfully" for being too left-field. "And he was absolutely right, I stand by that, because I wouldn't have fitted into his company." As soon as she saw his HQ, she knew she'd be a fish out of water. "It was a bit staid, there were no photos or mementos on anyone's desk."
And Lucinda is very touchy-feely. Throughout our interview in a nearby café she deals with fans graciously - her trick is to approach them first and shake their hand, so she is in control and can choose when to close down conversation.
But there's no denying that Lucinda was way out of her comfort zone during filming of The Apprentice. "There were times when I was thinking: 'What am I doing that is so bad? Have I upset these people?' And that really came as a shock because I've never had that before. I've always worked well in a team."
On the show, Lucinda was the child who couldn't "play nice" with the other kids. Some critics accused her of being socially dyslexic in terms of her dress code and self-presentation. Yet in all my dealings I've found her straightforward and highly principled. I, for one, would work for her. But there is undeniably a shadow hanging over her.
Something devastating happened in her childhood and today she has no contact with any of her family, apart from her younger half-brother, who is studying law.
Born in Singapore (her father is French-German), she travelled a lot as a child. Her wealthy parents divorced when she was very young. When her mother remarried she and her older sister moved with her to Hong Kong (her half-brother was born later). Eventually they returned to Britain where "my mother found me new schools every two years ... I just don't know why". But it taught her to charm strangers and not make snap judgments. It also gave her a strong sense of herself "otherwise you'd be a head case".
In the past she's refused point-blank to talk about her childhood. Today she admits that it's become "the elephant in the room". She can't go into specifics "because I've got to protect others" - but for the first time she explains she studied psychology at university to try to understand the damage of what went on.
"That's why I don't tolerate bullying and nastiness. From childhood I wanted to see why people behaved the way they did and get some understanding of that. And also try to ensure I wouldn't repeat the behaviour I had experienced, that I would nip anything like that in the bud. And I hope I stand by that." In the future, she says, she could see herself campaigning for families in a similar position.
Although she refuses to be defined by the emotional pain, physically it took a toll. She may be the picture of health today but there is a fragility about her. In her early twenties, polycystic ovaries and endometriosis were diagnosed. "I had painful symptoms from 13 or 14. When I was 17 a doctor told me that one way to resolve it was to get pregnant. Another gave me painkillers, which did kill the pain but left me in a zombie state."
She had treatment that included bimonthly-oestrogen injections to stop her ovulating for six months, so inducing a temporary menopause. "It was horrendous," she recalls. "I had night sweats... every menopause symptom there is."
Doctors told her she could still have children, something she hopes one day to do. But she feels strongly that alternative treatment could have been used.
"You can do acupuncture, look at your diet (caffeine-free, high in complex carbohydrates and low in sugar is best) and also try different herbs to relieve the symptoms.
"In my case that short, sharp shock did resolve it, but the aetiology - the root cause - was never explored. You need to look at the way you hold stress in your body - in your shoulders, your head. I know for example that I hold my stress in my stomach."
She would like to see more alternative treatments for PMS, "which doesn't just affect women, it affects men as well". She says 85 per cent of Western women report at least one symptom of PMS, but treatment is still too limited. " Nowadays they are giving young girls antidepressants, which I find shocking. I was prescribed Prozac in 2005; I didn't take it."
She believes buried pain will always come out through the body. "Although I applaud orthodox medicine, and of course I originally trained within neuroscience, I think there are other ways, holistically, of just being kinder to your body. In many ways I think we are going back to the principles of Chinese medicine, which dates from 3000BC, and Indian medicine, which goes back to 3300BC. Orthodox medicine only started in the late 18th century."
Her own heroes are people like Darwin - "ousted outcasts who were shunned and ridiculed, but there does come a time when they are applauded. The world doesn't move forward if everyone's the same."
The accusation often levelled at Lucinda during The Apprentice was that she was too creative for business. She loves art and reading, plays the harp, bakes and makes her own wine. She studied psychology and neuroscience at Manchester University.
In fact she knew absolutely nothing about business but a friend got her to apply to the top five management consultancy firms, who all offered places. More recently she's managed IT in the financial sector. She is, she laughs, rubbish with computers but that's a good thing. "If I can break the system, I'm the best person to test it."
There is an extraordinary mix of experience and naivety to Lucinda. She tells me how during one contract to weed out corruption in the financial advice sector she found it easy, as a blonde woman, to get boastful young men to tell her what they'd been up to.
But then you discover she hadn't watched telly for five years before she went on The Apprentice. She prefers Radio 4. It meant she didn't understand reality TV. What on earth made her go on the show if she had never seen an episode before? "Two colleagues I was project-managing kept pushing and pushing for me to apply. In the end, to keep them quiet, I agreed."
She assumed it would be a dry BBC2 factual series."The last place I worked I had 14 contract renewals, and I was headhunted to work in compliance, tax, legal, finance. So I didn't have any qualms about how I would behave with very difficult personalities." She learned the hard way.
When the series first went out her friends closed ranks. Back home in Edinburgh she lives in a self-contained colony of workers' houses in Leith. She and her neighbours are constantly in and out of each other's homes and they protected her from tabloid intrusion.
Her real friends call her "Cindy". She grew up as Cindy Burger but changed her surname to Ledgerwood in honour of her maternal grandmother, who died of motor neurone disease when Lucinda was a student (on The Apprentice she was called Lucinda because producers decided it would be confusing to have a Cindy and a Lindi).
She also inherited her grandmother's passion for nature. "She would take me out looking for herbs and we'd often pick elderberries to make champagne. She was from Yorkshire, a very dignified, astute lady. She was the last person you'd expect to see picking herbs and mushrooms."
HER grandmother was a hugely important role model. Watching someone she loved gradually lose the ability to speak or feed herself was devastating. "But it taught me to seize the day, to take the best from any situation and use it in a positive way. Which is perhaps why I, more than other people, do often put myself in quite strange situations, or do what I feel is best."
In spite of the Carrie Bradshaw-style wardrobe, she's hardly materialistic, preferring charity shops and Topshop. Her flat is full of second-hand furniture. But she doesn't see why you need to dress in black. Standing out is what's always helped her to get ahead. She doesn't think men want women to be like men "because then you're more of a threat".
Of course there are contradictions. She went on The Apprentice to be loveable - and it misfired badly. And why is a self-confessed "private person" still wearing that red beret (a beacon in any public place)? But what she really wants is to encourage young people into business. She's been lecturing at Edinburgh University and working with the Prince's Trust to that end.
She's still single. "People think they know you from TV so even starting a relationship is unbalanced." But she's just got a new flatmate, a Brazilian architect, who has no idea about her fame. "He keeps asking me out for a drink with his work colleagues. But I think he's got to get to know me a bit better first, because I know they'll go, 'Whoooa, that's the girl from The Apprentice.'"
Something tells me she'll have to get used to being recognised. Most reality TV stars are quick to use up their 15 minutes of fame - but what Lucinda does next will be the most interesting thing.
