Meet the other woman in Ulrika's life

It was, as in every tortured romance, the Other Woman who emerged to complicate Sven-Goran Eriksson's love life this week. Tough, sassy, manipulative, she used her full persuasive powers to remind Sven that he steps out of line at his peril. Whatever his true feelings for Ulrika Jonsson, she made clear, he must now cooperate - or face the full force of her media revenge.

The woman's name? No, not Nancy Dell'Olio, the two-timed "Dark Lady" who shares Mr Erik-sson's Regent's Park home, but Melanie Cantor, a television agent who has been the true force shaping the past week's scandalous headlines. You may be forgiven for not knowing Ms Cantor's name: after all, her role is to raise the profile of her clients, such as Jonsson, rather than her own. But as this week's headlines show, such behind-thescenes celebrity spinners are wielding ever-greater influence in Britain's newspapers.

When news of the affair broke in The Daily Mirror last Friday, it was Melanie Cantor who ensured Jonsson favourable coverage. The "Svensational" story - presented in the 3am Girls' celebrity-friendly spread on pages eight and nine - noted that "Ulrika has always stressed that her daughter and son Cameron, seven, are the most important things in her life". This "devoted mother" had put her flourishing TV career on hold while she nursed her sick baby, yet still "her career has gone from strength to strength".

As Mirror editor Piers Morgan, admitted this week, he approached Cantor to gain her co-operation with a story that was otherwise destined for the News of the World. "It's a pretty sensational piece of gossip and we'll treat it as such," he told her, "put it into our 3am slot and not make it out to be a big scandal." Since then, Jonsson's "friends" - and Cantor herself - have been widely quoted portraying the presenter in a positive light. While Eriksson's press-handling is controlled rather defensively by Paul Newman, head of communications at the Football Association, Cantor has taken a far more proactive approach. As one former editor told the Standard: "Ulrika has come out the winner. She clearly didn't like being treated as just an afternoon kickabout by Sven, and wanted to put the pressure on. This has been absolutely planned to the minute as a calculated media campaign."

Cantor, whose clients also include Melinda Messenger and the astrologer Claire Petulengro, has a reputation among journalists as a ruthless operator. "She makes no bones about not liking journalists," says one. "There tends to be a huge groan when you're told that you have to go through her - she's almost impossible to deal with." A number of those we spoke to also suggested that the publicity might even be orchestrated as a means of boosting Jonsson's career and increasing her market value - and that of her book deal, which emerged last night.

Cantor denies this flatly. "That's a crazy idea," she told the Standard. "If this was a publicity stunt, it would be brilliant - but we're not dealing with lapdancers from Spearmint Rhino. I don't need to push anything - I'd much rather it hadn't come out." She is not surprised by the extent of this week's coverage, which she defines as "a whole mish-mash of nonsense peppered with elements of truth". But she is concerned at pressure being put on Jonsson, a personal friend. "The press treats the story with a sense of detachment - it's purely words on the page for the public's entertainment. But behind the scenes there are real personal issues going on."

So, who is Melanie Cantor? A divorced mother of two teenage sons, aged 44, she lives in Belsize Park, having grown up in north London. She left Copthall School in Mill Hill in 1974 with nine O-levels and three A-levels, and took a bilingual English-French secretarial course at the City of London Polytechnic which led to some translating work in France. But it was after she took a secretarial job at the Daily Express that she developed a taste for the media.

She took various jobs as a PR assistant, most usefully with the publicist Peter Thompson, who set her on the road to celebrity PR. Cantor went on to be launch press officer for TV-am from 1982 to 1984; later she set up her own PR firm, acting for clients including Michael Aspel and Lysette Anthony.

Her big break was a meeting with Ulrika Jonsson in 1991, at a time when she was working from home for an array of celebrities and magazines. "I was recommended to her by a journalist friend who said she didn't just want a publicist, but somebody to do the whole bit for her - she wanted an agent," according to Cantor. "And so I agreed to meet up and see if we got on, and we did. I just thought to myself, I've got nothing to lose if she's ready to take the risk with me." This led to what she calls her "dream job" - apart, that is, from "having to be involved in other people's divorces".

FOUR years ago she set up Take Three Management with two other agents, Vicki McIvor and Sara Cameron, based in the celebrity enclave of Primrose Hill. Although clients have included Lynda Bellingham and Julia Carling, it is Jonsson who has taken up much of her professional time. It was Cantor who was there to brief the media on her daughter Bo's heart operations; and it was Cantor who, having introduced Jonsson to the millionaire Simon Astaire, had to tell the press when the relationship later failed.

Cantor's involvement with her clients goes far beyond professional detachment. Indeed, she has advised other agents to "take on people whom you really care about", which, in the case of Jonsson, has meant acting as godmother to Bo, and even sharing a cell with her in Brixton Prison (that, it should be said, was for a charity fundraiser). She has stuck loyally behind Jonsson even during the presenter's career lows: despite the critics' pasting of her 1997 show It's Ulrika, Cantor declared it "a major highlight because, for me, it really proved she was capable of doing what was above and beyond people's expectations".

For those journalists who have benefited from Cantor's deal-making, her reputation for toughness does not come as a problem. Nic McCarthy, editor of OK!, has been talking to her most days this week, and says she has been discreet, although she has not denied the relationship: "She's very straight-dealing, and never promises anything she can't deliver. She also knows how to have a good laugh."

Others are more reflective. One who has dealt with her since she represented Michael Aspel in the early 1990s calls her "clever, sassy, with an uncanny understanding of how the media works, and a good manipulator of the tabloids". The journalist adds that she is "a very good friend to all her clients, sometimes too friendly - she tends to get motivated by their wounded feelings rather than stepping right back".

But Cantor is not bothered what others think. "I'd hope that I'm tough," she says. "That would mean I'm doing my job properly."