When Faria Alam' s family fled the ravages of the civil war in Bangladesh, they travelled in the hope of making a better life for themselves.

That is exactly what Faria thought she had done when she accepted a £35,000-a-year job as a secretary at the Football Association.

But it has not brought her the kind of lifestyle her parents had in mind when they exchanged the heat of Dhaka for the low skies of the North of England.

They were strict Muslims whose fervent hope was that their only daughter would wed and settle down into a secure family life. They lived first in Bradford, then in Newcastle.

But in their effort to keep her in touch with her cultural background, they frequently took her back to Bangladesh. And when she was 16, they arranged for her to marry a prosperous businessman in Dhaka.

The prospect of becoming a conventional Muslim wife, however, held no appeal for this independent young woman. Within a few months the marriage was over and she was on a plane to Britain, ostensibly to pursue her education.

There, she developed the lust for attention and fame which has been her undoing.

'She's starstruck,' her 33-year- old brother Aswat sadly observes.

This led her to discard the moral constraints which her parents tried so hard to imbue in her, and has placed her at the centre of the scandal that could yet cost Sven Goran Eriksson his job.

At 38, Faria Alam is entitled to make her own mistakes. But that is no consolation to her family.

'It is shocking to see what is being said about her,' Aswat says from his home in Seattle on America's Pacific coast, where he is undergoing treatment for renal disease and diabetes.

'When she told us she had got the job at the FA, I warned her to be careful. If she worked in such a place, she would end up with her face in the newspapers.

'Our mother always wanted her to settle down. But she is very independent. She's not the sort of woman who wants to settle down.'

The truth is that Faria always wanted to hang out with the fast set. That is why, when she attended Ponteland Community High School in Newcastle, she gave herself the nickname of 'Ferrari'.

There was a touch of sad self-delusion in that choice - for the one thing that Faria didn't have when she was at school was glamour.

'She really was very nondescript,' a contemporary remembers. 'She was very bookish.'

Her classmates at the College of Art and Technology, where she studied to become a computer technician and analyst (those who can remember her at all, that is) tell a similar story.

'She was actually very shy,' says an old college acquaintance.

In the early 1990s, her businessman father and her mother, Khatun, decided to move to Seattle. Faria was supposed to join them but was unable to get the necessary permits.

moved instead to London where, once the restraining parental hand was removed, she started running wild. She moved into a flat in Battersea and then headed for the West End. 'She started going to a lot of parties,' her brother recalls.

She also started modelling. 'She was quite good at it,' says Swani Gulshan, who took several fashion shots of her in the early '90s. 'She had a sexy smile and long legs and she got a lot of work modelling clothes for the Asian market, which was just getting started then.'

In 1996, however, she entered a beauty competition organised by Zee TV, the channel that serves the Asian community. When she failed to win, she was finally forced to accept that she was never going to be a Vogue cover girl and, at 30, had no alternative but to put her education to use. She got work as a computer analyst, with occasional jobs in PR and as a part-time secretary.

As she proclaims though an entry on the Friends Reunited website, her real interest was 'partying around the world ...fantastic!'.

She also had a passion, it seems, for writing and - a revelation that will send tremors through the FA - always kept a diary. We now know she had a lot to record.

'She was always jetting off on holiday to places such as Barbados and going to restaurants like the Ivy,' says her friend. 'She liked to travel by limousine as much as she could and always wears designer clothes.'

All this required money, and Faria discovered that there were any number of rich men who were more than willing to entertain her.

' She's a huge flirt,' adds the friend. 'She loves wearing short skirts to work, and takes pride in looking very sexy.

' She's a fun- loving girl who likes having lots of affairs, never mentions the past and rarely worries about the present.'

ANTICS

Her parents knew nothing about her London life. 'They still thought Faria was still shy and demure, the way she was when she was young,' the associate continues.

In fact, Faria's father died just over a year ago. 'I can say only that it is good that he is not alive to know what has been happening at the FA,' says a girlfriend.

However, Aswat had a clearer idea of the path his sister was following. They keep in close touch, telephoning each other once a week. He was aware how much she liked hanging out with celebrities and how excited she was to be mixing with the stars of the football world.

Faria joined the FA last year as personal assistant to its executive director, David Davies. 'It was funny because she was never very sporty - indeed, as a girl, she couldn't even ride a bicycle,' her brother says.

Within a few weeks of joining, she had started an affair with chief executive Mark Palios, a 51-yearold divorced father of five.

When that cooled, she took up with Eriksson. There is now talk of a third and possibly even fourth affair with other FA officials, which is why some footballers are calling her 'the real FA Trophy'.

Aswat is not prepared to ask his sister for the intimate details of these allegations. 'She went out with Eriksson for dinner and, as far as I know, nothing went on,' he says. 'As her brother, that's all I want to know.'