Tennis, tantrums and drugs

What a year it's been for Lucy Rusedski. Twelve months ago, the 28-year-old actress and wife of Britain's No 2 tennis player Greg Rusedski was preparing for her first television presenting job. She and her sister Oonagh were asked to do some lifestyle pieces for the BBC during last year's Wimbledon. "It was my big break," says Lucy when we, eventually, meet up. But then, a few months later, everything fell apart.

First, her husband got lambasted when he lost his temper and called a Wimbledon umpire a w*****. Then, last September, he tested positive for the banned, performance-enhancing drug nandrolone. He was eventually cleared at a tribunal in March. But next, just after the Loos-Beckham affair became public, Lucy Rusedski was propelled into the limelight again when it emerged that she had encountered Rebecca Loos on the tennis circuit and had warned Victoria Beckham that the woman was bad news.

And so life - or rather, defending her husband from tennis groupies and charges of taking performance-enhancing drugs - took over.

We should have met a year ago. Even today it's been tricky. There has been a lot of to-ing and fro-ing about cars and pictures and hair and make-up but, finally, here we are on a spring day sitting in the lounge of the Portobello Hotel. She looks pretty, slim, dressed in trendy jeans and high boots and de rigueur white vintage lacey top and jacket. She's very nervous.

"I haven't really done many interviews," she says, twisting a lock of her long, dark brown hair. "People think I have because there's been so much written about me and Greg. I did OK! seven years ago, but that paid for me to go to drama school." She says she has been under a lot of pressure to talk but has held back. "The past six months have been a nightmare," she says. "Now it all seems a long time ago but I've been exhausted dealing with it all."

She's had a pretty busy time recently. Last weekend, she and her husband were at the Beckhams', celebrating David's 28th birthday. "We had a lovely time and it was a great party and everyone seemed perfectly happy, so hopefully everything's going well for them."

She and her husband got to know the Beckhams years ago on the sporting circuit. "But the tennis circuit and the football circuit are very different," she says. "We're not very Footballers' Wives on the tennis circuit. Most of us met our husbands when we were young and have been with them for years.

I met Greg when I was 15. I was a ball girl at Queen's and there he was, grinning at me. We're not as communal as the football people because it's not a team sport." As with any sport, though, tennis attracts its own brand of groupies. "You see them all the time," says Lucy. "They're always hanging around but they are not very successful. The players know who they are and most have no interest in them. Even if you get a player going out with one of them, it rarely lasts."

Do they pursue her husband? "Sometimes," she says, "but he's a very faithful and loyal man."

Did Rebecca Loos pursue him - is that why she warned Posh? She laughs. "I don't think anyone would dare! I can be like a wildcat when challenged.

Everyone thinks Greg's the one with the temper because of his outbursts on court whereas at home he's very laid back and it's more likely to be me to start the fireworks.

"You should see him at home playing with the cats in his James Bond room. He loves that room. He spent all his life playing tennis since he was a child in Canada and he missed out on the things most people do, so, as a pastime, he became obsessed with James Bond. Isn't that sweet? He's such a softie."

He may well be a softie, but he has managed to rub quite a few people up the wrong way. He has been through a surprising number of coaches, including Pat Cash who, it must be said, was pretty scathing of Rusedski when news of his positive drugs test leaked out in January.

Rusedski is, according to my mole in the tennis world, not very well liked, renowned for being both solitary, difficult and overcompetitive. Lucy Rusedski looks genuinely astounded when I put this to her. "Who told you that?" she says. "I do not agree with that portrayal of Greg. It's not just that I'm his wife, I've known him all this time and so has all my family. Everyone is devoted to him because he is honest and decent. Anyone can see that. It's written all over his face. All players go through coaches. I wouldn't believe what Pat Cash says. It's a jealous world. Lots of people do and say nasty things."

In fact, when she first heard about the drug allegations, Lucy Rusedski immediately wondered if someone had tampered with her husband's urine sample. "I was in London at Greg's agent's office and Greg was in Morocco playing in the Davis Cup. The laboratory officials rang and insisted they would only talk to Greg. I knew then that something terrible was up."

When she found out he had tested positive she was horrified. "Well, I knew it wasn't true," she says. "Greg has always been anti-drugs. I can't tell you how careful he is. He won't take cold remedies because he's never sure exactly what is in them. When he found out, he called me on the phone. He could barely speak." She, however, turned out to be made of sterner stuff.

"I got my thoughts together and realised I had to fight it. I've never been this perfect tennis wife. I always had my own career, or at least I tried to. I trained at Mount View drama school and I've never just followed him around the world. He would have hated me to do that. I knew I had to fight this allegation because the best thing for him to do was to keep playing tennis. He'd hold it together then."

So, Greg Rusedski went to play in Australia, while his wife stayed here to assemble a range of experts and lawyers with the back-up of her charity worker father, Terry, and artist mother, Margaret.

"I was determined to get his name cleared," she says. "I have a huge extended family and it affected everyone. No one ever asked him if he had taken anything but I think it was important for everyone that he was found innocent."

In the end, he was cleared at a tribunal in Canada in March after the Association of Tennis Professionals accepted that the drug may have been contained in energyreplacing drinks handed out by its own trainers. "The lawyers established that seven other top players had been accused and cleared and that the only thing they all had in common with each other and Greg had to be something given to them on the tennis circuit."

The relief, she says, was overwhelming.

"I felt as though everything could start again. When Greg was accused most of the newspapers were not supportive. Suddenly, he became a Canadian, not a Brit [he was born in Canada but took British nationality nine years ago]. We've been used to that," she says. "He's never been truly accepted. But I think the public supported him."

Compared to the cool, calm, collected and awfully English Henmans, the Rusedkis seem overtly showy, what with her emotional courtside manner and his tantrums. With their lantern jaws and huge mouths full of gleaming white teeth, most people think they are actually American. "I'm from Purley!" says Lucy. Still, they are often portrayed as being constantly at glamorous parties and of selling their wedding to Hello! Again, Lucy Rusedski finds this hard to take.

"We didn't sell our wedding. I love to go out, I love to wear beautiful clothes but Greg is always travelling and I don't tend to go without him so, believe me, I'm hardly painting the town red."

What about the supposed rivalry with the Henmans? "Oh, you mean all that I- went -to-state-school, she-went-privately thing? Well, I'm very emotional and show it and she doesn't tend to, but that's about it. I wouldn't say we were close and Greg and Tim are rivals, but we're not at each others' throats."

She admits, however, that she wakes up every day feeling angry. "Incandescent sometimes," she says. "I cannot believe we've had to go through six months of agony. And it's cost us upwards of £400,000. We can't get it back. No one believed those charges but it let all sorts of malicious people say awful things about Greg and that is really upsetting. But we survived. It wasn't about his career being over. He's 30; his career will be over in a couple of years. He accepts that just as he accepts he'll never win Wimbledon. But to think he would have had to leave tennis branded a cheat ... it would have destroyed him."

At the moment, she's not sure what the future holds for them. "Greg will get out of tennis and we'll have kids and a nice life."

Are she and Oonagh going to be at Wimbledon for the BBC again this year? "No," she says. "It was very exciting. It was my first job but it was all done on the hoof and very rushed. I'm not sure if it really worked. I don't just want to be seen as a tennis person or wife of ... Before I met Greg I didn't even like tennis that much."

But everything else is going well. She has apparently tamed his temper. He has given her a happy life and a house in Battersea. "Do you know something?" she says. "I've known Greg for such a long time that I'm pretty tough on him. When he gets cross on court I just think, 'Get on with it'.

"He can be tiresome sometimes. Over the years, when we were younger, we were always trying to call it a day but, in the end, we hated being apart so here we are. I like that," she says. "I like stability. That's what makes me happy." And then she winds that lock of hair, rather nervously, round her finger again.