My first night with Ulrika

John Leslie today talks for the first time about his relationship with Ulrika Jonsson. He claims it was passionate and physical from the first night.

Jonsson took the initiative in the bedroom after their first date and was - he says - "very liberated", although she could "switch off once it was over".

Although he walked from court a free man last week, Leslie says he remains "hurt and bitter" at what he and his family have been put through.

Leslie was arrested following claims in Jonsson's autobiography she had been raped by a television presenter. Although she has always refused to name the man, Leslie was named as the attacker by Matthew Wright on Channel 5.

Her refusal to subsequently speak out on his behalf had "damned" him and he warns that the episode will continue to haunt Jonsson too - because "people will not stop asking who did rape her".

Leslie met Ulrika at a studio in Rathbone Place in 1987. He says she gave him her phone number. He took her out for dinner - and they had sex on that first date.

From then on they saw each other regularly. Leslie thought she was "the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my life".

He says: "I was 22 and I had just moved to London. I knew nobody and she was my first girlfriend - and she was gorgeous. We went out for meals and to the cinema. I was working as a DJ and she would come to my gigs and wait for me."

He claims that, even at 19, Ulrika was desperately ambitious to get into television, grilling him constantly about who she would need to know and how she could get to meet them.

He found she had a "healthy appetite" for sex. But he says: "She seemed very liberated but at the same time detached and somehow disengaged.

"She could have sex and appear to be involved yet switch off emotionally the moment it was over. I thought it was maybe a Scandinavian thing - I had never found that disengagement with British women."

In her autobiography, Honest, Ulrika never named the man she claims date-raped her.

Nevertheless Wright blurted out Leslie's name during his morning show on 23 October. Amid the uproar that followed this "outing", Ulrika remained steadfastly silent.

Leslie, 38, says: "A monster was emerging, a monster who was given my name and my face."

He defended himself, insisting he had not attacked Ulrika Jonsson or anyone else. And he could not understand why Jonsson did not speak out to clear his name.

He says: "I was damned by her silence. With one simple statement she could have resolved this one way or another. If she had said, 'John Leslie did not rape me' that would have put an end to it. If she had said, 'John Leslie DID rape me' I could have defended myself. For her to say nothing was inhuman."

He admits Jonsson's description of the rape incident bears similarities to a situation the couple shared, but there are also important differences.

In her book, Jonsson, 35, says the unnamed TV presenter arrived at her hotel room with flowers. They began petting but when Jonsson suggested they should leave for the cinema he started pulling at her clothes and pushed her onto the bed where he raped her.

However, Leslie says: "For good or ill, flowers and chocolates are not my style - which is why I have a very clear memory of the one time I did bring Ulrika flowers."

He says she had been ill and he had gone to her hotel bearing flowers to ask if she needed anything. But she made it clear she didn't want him around, so he gave her the flowers and left.

Leslie says accounts of the alleged rape on television and radio were inconsistent.

"One said she had been raped in her flat whereas I knew she was living in a hotel when she worked at TV-AM. The dates kept changing and even some details about the rapist himself.

"He was married than he wasn't. He lived in the Home Counties - no it was London. He was a television presenter at the time but now he wasn't - or maybe he was." Leslie says it was being construed that he was the rapist - and the only person who could clear him was silent.

Leslie says he was infuriated by a reported comment from Ulrika after he walked from court a free man last week. "She apparently said, 'This is getting on my f****** t*** now, this is nothing to do with me!' What? Nothing to do with her?"

He says he doesn't know whether he can forgive her. But he warns that "she is as marked by this as I am," adding: "This will follow Ulrika for the rest of her career too. People will not stop asking her who it was who raped her."

Leslie says although he has been exonerated, he has lost his job and been on the verge of bankruptcy. Had he known what he was facing 10 months ago, he would have shot himself.

And, while admitting he has the "unswerving love" of his family and his girlfriend, Abi Titmuss, he remains "hurt and bitter".