Is Nancy a style guru?

Money can't buy taste - and it clearly can't buy good manners, either. In a swipe at British fashion, Nancy Dell'Olio - yes, she of the red rhinestone catsuit - has pronounced our style to be 'very individual'.

She went on to gloat: 'Of course, generally, maybe Italians and French have much more style.' Meaning, of course, that unless an outfit is slashed to the navel and accessorised with statement jewels and hooker hair, a girl just really isn't making an effort.

Nancy's particular brand of Lily Savage chic, which you rarely see in Britain outside Soho, may be de rigueur on the Continent, but it looks hopelessly overblown in buttoned-up Blighty. Nancy may have been living in Britain for the past two years, but she has made no attempt to understand our eclectic, understated style. She has bulldozed onto the scene with her 'more is more' fashion philosophy without once stopping to think if it's appropriate. To someone who actually chooses to wear mink-trimmed jade satin to a party, the restrained chic of a simple black dress must seem so drab.

You can't help admiring Nancy's chutzpah. And, let's face it, her fabulous misunderstanding of British culture, fashion and etiquette has turned her into the best floorshow we've seen in ages.

You can imagine how Sven Goran Eriksson, the careful Swede, must bury his head in his hands when Nancy lets fly with another corker. He is now said to have talked to her about toning down her look for a Downing Street function next month. It would be a sad day for us all if she took his advice - but I imagine it would take more than a reproach from Sven to make Nancy part company with her corset collection.

Fashion - for want of a better word - has become Nancy's weapon. Ever since she was front-page news during the revelations of Sven's affair with Ulrika Jonsson, she has used clothes shamelessly to court publicity.

Back then, the 41-year-old Italian lawyer was just another liplinerloving member of the Euro Trash set. You see women like Nancy every day in the more chi-chi corners of London, shopping for baubles in Bulgari and sipping Pelligrino in starry trattorias. But when news of the affair broke, Nancy was launched into the limelight. And, mamma mia, did she love it.

On day one of her campaign to keep her man, Nancy appeared on the steps of San Lorenzo looking triumphant in chianti-coloured satin. Enormous diamond chains swung from her ears, and her unfeasibly raven hair billowed around her like a storm cloud. It was a terrifying war cry and, frankly, if I'd been Ulrika I'd have been under my bed.

Two weeks later, she out-poshed Posh at a party for the England World Cup team heading off to Japan. Her beaded turquoise gown with transparent peek-aboo panels by designer Randolph Duke screamed: 'And you think Sven wants her, when he can have this?' Nancy does 'sexy' - and she does it all the time. She can make even a demure white shirt look like something from a questionable movie by undoing just one button too many. Her jeans are always uncomfortably tight, and even in the stands during an England game she couldn't resist wearing a T-shirt with cleavage keyholes.

Her final triumph came with a counterattack-on Ulrika just as her rival's confessions about her affair with Sven appeared in the papers. Nancy was on holiday with Sven in Mauritius, and she appeared day after day in a parade of teeny bikinis.

This trouper may have been on the wrong side of 40, but, come hell or high seas, she was going to show the world she had a paparazzi-worthy body.

Nancy Dell'Olio's non-stop fashion show has given us hours of entertainment. What a shame she never did get to co-host a television fashion advice programme with Carol Vorderman (Sven apparently wouldn't allow her). Imagine the heaving bosoms, the tango-tans, the sequins and the jewels . . . oh the jewels!

Nancy believes she is on a mission to educate we dowdy Brits in the power of fashion.

Well, the Danny La Rue look may have worked for her, but for the rest of us demure will do fine, grazie.