Stepping into Dublin Castle in a slinky jade evening dress, Iris Robinson returned to public life in a way she could only have dreamed of during the darkest days of her disgrace.
Nothing about her outfit for the Queen's banquet was under-stated as might have been expected of a 62-year-old woman who had taken a toyboy lover and been at the centre of one of Ireland's biggest sexual and financial scandals.
A striking look has long been her way of boosting her self-confidence. "I realised the importance of a stylish wardrobe when Peter was on trial in Drogheda for leading a (loyalist) invasion into Clontibret," Iris once confided to me.
"In court every day, the media focused on what I was wearing so I decided clothes would be my camouflage. I wore bold colours to hide my nervousness – a big purple ski suit one day and an emerald green tartan skirt and sweater another day to show the Republic didn't have a monopoly on that colour."
It was a long way Clontibret to the First Minister's office at Stormont and Iris had waited for her moment in the sun for a long time. I spent hours talking to her at her East Belfast home just before Peter succeeded Ian Paisley. She was looking forward to her role as Northern Ireland's First Lady and to all the glamorous functions and dinners she would attend.
But when rumours started about her affair with 19-year-old Kirk McCambley circulated, and later the revelation that she'd secured £50,000 (€56,000) from two builders to help set up his café business, the high life stopped.
Over the past 18 months, she has been receiving "acute psychiatric treatment". Her fall from grace was such that it was believed she'd never be seen publicly again. But the rehabilitation of Iris Robinson is well under way.
The grandeur of Dublin Castle was the ideal stage for her reappearance. No-one adores opulence like Iris. The Robinsons' East Belfast home is over-powering. Curtians of wine and gold silk rise into a central coronet.
Sculptures of Marie Antoinette and other figures Iris admires predominate. Chandeliers hang in every room. Iris sleeps in a massive four-poster Gothic bed. "I think I was born in another era," Iris told me as she gave me the tour.
Her heroines are feisty – Bette Davis and Katherine Hepburn. "My favourite film is Gone With the Wind. Scarlett O'Hara is wonderful . . . what a spirit!" she said.
Iris is a staunch royalist, although her faith was slightly rocked when Princess Diana died. "It's possible she was murdered," Iris said. "The government . . . set up people for assassination who could have caused them trouble. By marrying a Muslim, Diana would have embarrassed them."
The timing and nature of Iris's departure from public life and as Strangford MP remains puzzling. It was announced after Christmas 2009 that she was stepping down from politics due to "stress and strain".
Despite her financial dealings, adultery and attempted suicide, she had no such plans just a month earlier. "I've so much still to do and so much want to be part of political life," she had told a local newspaper. Cynics wondered if Iris's newly announced retirement plans were motivated by the imminent BBC Spotlight programme with its revelations about her.
A month after the Spotlight programme, the DUP claimed that Iris was under 24-hour suicide watch. She was photographed sauntering around London, looking glamorous, chewing gum and smiling. At the time, she was receiving treatment in a psychiatric clinic there which charges up to £1,000 a day.
On St Patrick's Day this year, she reappeared, shopping in Fultons, Belfast's premier furniture store. One customer told the Mail: "We were amazed to see the woman we had heard was so seriously ill waltzing around the store full of the joys of spring.
"A group of paintings caught her eye and she was telling the woman with her that she and Peter already owned some of the items on display. She bought some artificial flowers. She looked amazing in a well-cut black trouser suit."
The fact is, despite her trenchant views on homosexuality, ('an abomination, sick, disgusting, nauseous'), she was never the frumpy, fundamentalist Protestant wife. She loves motoring along in her black and cream Mini, blasting Bruce Springsteen or Patsy Cline.
Her lingerie for the royal banquet will have been as carefully chosen as her dress. Iris once brought me into her lilac dressing-room where black lacy underwear was laid out for a function she was attending later. She opened her "bra drawers" to reveal row upon row of sexy lingerie. "Peter has over 1,000 ties and I have as many bras," she said.
Nor, despite her affair, was it ever a case that Iris didn't love her husband. They met at the local tech when she was 16 and he was 17. She knew instantly he was "the one".
A few months later, Peter expressed doubts and asked for a break. Iris couldn't eat nor sleep. "I lost a stone in a fortnight. Every morning, Id' wait on the road and secretly watch him driving to work on his scooter. My mother said, 'there's plenty more fish in the sea'. And I said, 'I don't want fish, I want Peter.' Iris eventually got her man.
As the marriage progressed, she complained they led separate lives with Peter's time taken up with "province and party". Yet she was neither the subdued wife nor manipulated lover. When she secured the £50,000 for Kirk McCabmely, she took a £5,000 cut herself.
At a time when the Robinsons earned almost £600,000 a year from politics, such greed was astounding. After the affair ended, Iris appeared petty and vindictive ordering that Kirk repay the £45,000 to a strict deadline.
Despite the salacious details of the affair, the real scandal surrounding Iris revolves around money, not sex. With the click of her fingers, she secured £50,000 for her lover from builders Fred Frazer and Ken Campbell. The now deceased Frazer was a major contractor in Castlereagh where Iris was mayor several times.
The local government code of conduct states that anyone with a financial or personal interest in a matter before the council has to declare so at any meeting where it is being considered.
According to council minutes, Iris attended the final council meeting in late August 2008 which ratified Kirk McCambley's lease for the café. The minutes don't record her declaring an interest.
Peter Robinson was alleged to have breached ministerial code when he learned of his wife's £50,000 deal. He insisted she pay the money back but didn't inform the appropriate authorities of her transaction.
The Stormont departmental solicitor's office said that judging on the information with which it was provided, he hadn't breached the ministerial code. The office's legal opinion was never published. Sir Christopher Kelly, who conducted the inquiry into MPs expenses said it should be. "This is an area where transparency is important. I think there must remain a doubt until the reported investigation is published."
Iris Robinson was Strangford MP when she received £50,000 from the two builders. MPs are expected to report themselves to the office of the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner if in doubt about their actions.
The office said it had no record of any self-referral after the scandal broke last year. Complaints are regularly lodged about MPs by other MPs or members of the public but the office said it has never been asked to investigate Iris.
This week, a DUP spokesperson refused to comment on any of these issues. Yet several events have fallen into place in the lead-up to Iris's first public reappearance. After a police investigation into her role in setting McCambley up in business, the Public Prosecution Service announced that Iris wouldn't be prosecuted.
An inquiry requested by Casltereagh Council, which has yet to be fully published, has cleared Iris of wrongdoing, according to the DUP – though until the full report is published, questions remain.
The Stormont Assembly's standards and privileges committee investigation into the controversy is still ongoing. But the feeling is that Iris has nothing to worry about and her rehabilitation is set to continue.
Just 18 months ago that looked incomprehensible and her husband's career was hanging by a thread. Cynics suggest that Iris is irrelevant. The establishment is saving her solely in order to protect Peter who is instrumental to the peace and political process.
Had the wives of Ulster Unionist leader, Tom Elliot, or Traditional Unionist Voice leader, Jim Allister, behaved in a similar fashion, both men's careers would have been swiftly over. But they are not 'on message' unionists.
Sinn Féin, experiencing its own problems at the time over allegations that Gerry Adams' brother Liam raped his three-year-old daughter Aine Tyrell, gave the DUP an easy time over Iris.
The past 18 months really have been about saving Peter. Divorce, for various reasons, was never an option. Robinson is 62, his career in electoral politics is in its last phase and a seat in the House of Lords seems the natural development for a man whose drive in life has always been politics.
That would be impossible were his wife still under a cloud. A fully rehabilitated Lady Robinson, welcome in polite society, is essential. Her husband has tried hard to soften his image. He recently condemned the media for an "appalling lack of understanding about mental health issues", saying he was the one who had to pick Iris up afterwards.
It's a very different impression to the one we gained of him after her attempted suicide. Hours later, he was in the Assembly, cracking jokes and in fine form. It was Iris's political adviser, Selwyn Black, who sat at her home and liaised with her medical carers.
Peter has said that Iris will continue to accompany him to official functions. Iris's 'health' didn't permit her to attend the wedding of Prince William to Kate Middleton three weeks before the Dublin Castle event. But the Royal wedding came just a week before the North's Assembly elections. The DUP may well have been concerned about voters' potential reaction to Iris's reappearance.
Not so now. Mrs Robinson is back as a fashion icon. The Belfast boutique where she bought her dress has been flooded for demands for the outfit, including from Dublin. Owner Pat Jourdan Scott, said: "We haven't had as much interest in a gown since the Liz Hurely safety pin dress." The resurrection of Iris Robinson is very much on track.
