By Jules Stenson and Guy Basnett

And the single mum of two revealed the truth behind a set of steamy pictures that surfaced two weeks ago, showing her naked and cavorting in a Devon cornfield with latest married conquest, Met Office work colleague Mark Cross.

Scandal

Katie admitted they WERE having sex after a fews drinks in the pub but denied it was a publicity stunt fixed for the camera.

"Screw it, I'm not going to apologise," she insisted. "Yes we were making love. It's obvious from the pictures what we were doing.

"Mark had the benefit of seeing the full Katie Hopkins out on show.

"I promise you we had no idea the photographer was there. I was away from the Apprentice house, I was away from London, back at home in my personal space, enjoying my personal time. I just didn't expect anything like this.

"It wasn't staged. If it had been I'd have brushed my hair!"

But Katie admitted the scandal had shocked her parents Anona and Roy.

"My family is very conservative," she said. "My mum told me, ‘I'm really disappointed in you', as was my dad. And that means I'm disappointed in me and unhappy with what I'd done.

"I don't apologise for seeing Mark or doing what I did. I'm ruled by my heart. But I do apologise for hurting my family. I'm not proud of that."

Nevertheless headstrong Katie refused to rule out becoming a hubby-snatcher AGAIN.

"I'll always follow my heart," she vowed. "Whoever my next person is, if I find them brilliant I will go with it, whatever the situation—whether they're married, black, white, whatever.

"I'm not saying I will deliberately pick on a married man. But at my age, and the level of man I go for, they don't tend to be single."

Katie revealed that her relationship with workmate Mark had ended after the snaps were published.

But she refused to apologise for the fling—and admits this deeply personal testimony of their relationship will be seen as an "open love letter" calling on her lost love to finally ditch loyal wife Ruth, 50, and walk out on his seven-year marriage.

Grudgingly she added: "Now Mark's back with his wife and I'm doing the right thing—I'm letting them get on with trying to save their marriage.

"But it's hard. I'm going through hell. This is so much harder than The Apprentice."

Man-eater Katie's affair with Cross is just the latest in a string of liaisons that have seen her attacked for breaking up THREE marriages, involving SIX children.

But the self-confessed "ruthless alpha-female" insisted: "I'm not going to say I'm sorry. I saw Mark was wearing a wedding ring. I knew he was married from day one.

"There are some situations where you follow your head, and some where you follow your heart.

"I follow my heart. I loved Mark. I still love Mark. It isn't something I will apologise for."

The pair met as they both worked at the Met Office's HQ in Devon, where she was on a £90,000 salary as a global brand manager and he was a senior design boss.

They regularly took trips together to London and were often put up in the same hotels, dining in the same restaurants and whiling away long nights of free time together.

Eventually this close working relationship exploded into physical attraction and they ended up in bed together.

They managed to keep their passionate affair a secret for six months.

"Mark's brilliant at what he does, which is something I've always found extremely attractive," said Katie. "And he's very fit and athletic, someone who's strong, which I like.

"Keeping it all quiet was hard but I didn't feel guilty about it. Guilty wasn't a part of it. We were great together.

"Mark's definitely my missing person of the moment. He's my other half.

"We hadn't got so far as to talking about marriage, but we had got to that stage where it just feels so right with each other. We were together—and we were brilliant together."

Katie recalled a steamy break the lovers shared in Rome—just before returning home and getting caught out alfresco by the camera.

"It's the most romantic city in the world," she said. "We went to the Spanish Steps and all the other wonderful sights. We both thought it was brilliant.

"You don't get trips like that, with people like that, very often in your life. You have to cherish moments like that."

Since Cross went back to his wife, Katie admits she has been plunged into the depths of depression, losing an incredible TWO STONE in weight.

"Everybody is seeing our relationship through certain lenses," she added.

"There's the lens that says he's married, and the lens that makes me into some man-eating superbitch, the most hated woman in Britain.

"We're just very passionate people—two people that love each other to death. That's the reality."

But Katie was quickly back in bitch mode when she turned to another recent liaison—with fellow Apprentice contestant and ex-Army toff PAUL CALLAGHAN.

In ungentlemanly fashion he last week described how they had sex in the TV house attic and rated her just six out of ten.

Katie, who insists she's a perfect ten, admitted they fell for each other but denied sleeping with him on location. "We were quite huggy and we did spend a lot of time together," she said. "But I think he was a sap. He was my puppy dog."

Katie also hit back at critics who condemned her over the way she landed husband Damian McKinney—when he'd already had a wife for 20 years and three children.

Katie insists that the marriage was already on the rocks when they became close. And she accused Damian of then ripping HER world apart by dumping her for a younger mistress—just after she gave birth to their second child.

"Since I left the TV show I'm the one who's been made out as nasty," she said. "But there is another side to the stories. Damian was unfaithful to ME and left me devastated."

Katie recalled how she was instantly attracted to ex-army man Damian—15 years her senior—after joining his business consultancy firm McKinney Rogers in September 2003.

"He was a good-looking version of Sir Alan," she said. "He had this incredible charisma. When he walked into the room you just knew he was there. He was a brilliant man.

"He was still married but he was separated. He lived in a flat in London and his wife and family lived in Devon.

"I took an interest in him at a time when clearly no one else was doing it. He was so clever, turning his company into a global empire. But the thing about people like him is that while they spend all day supporting others and solving their problems, often nobody will be there for any problems they have.

"I was there for Damian at that time and we became very close."

The pair married in 2004 and lived in New York. But Katie claims that just a year into their marriage, Damian started an affair. And to make matters worse Katie was friends with the brunette secretary in question. She'd even helped her gain a new post in New York that put her closer to Damian.

"She was a younger version of me, with brown hair," said Katie. "I first found out about it when I found an email with details about some tickets for the two of them to see a show in Manhattan. They were for the same week as our anniversary.

"A woman just knows when her husband is having an affair, and I knew. But I thought at one stage I might be able to salvage the relationship for the children."

Katie gave birth to India in September 2004, and then Poppy a year later, at a hospital in Exeter, near their home.

"The day after I had Poppy, Damian left with his girlfriend for a conference," said Katie. "I didn't want him to go. I knew she was going to be there and it was the end of our marriage. When he came back home he just picked up his things and left.

"She was the new me. The younger new me. She's now in our old apartment, sitting at my old desk—but she couldn't do my job, because she doesn't have any brains."

After the split Katie began a relationship with a fellow worker at the same firm-ex-marine Paul Collin—despite his three-year marriage to wife Melanie, mum of his two kids.

Again Katie insists the couple had already separated. "He lived in a flat, not in the marital home," she said. "They'd split up, and reports that I broke them up are tosh."

The pair began flirting with each other at work, which led to dinner together and then into the sack. And Katie described how they hit the road for passionate romps all over the county.

"Devon is a beautiful place and Paul had a camper van we'd travel around in," she said.

"Everybody loves to be loved. But it was only the one summer."

Katie also fended off criticism over her controversial confession that she decided to run the New York Marathon when she was pregnant "to see if the baby was meant to be".

Last night she told us: "That was my opinion at the time. I won't apologise for that. That was how I was thinking. I was something like seven or eight weeks pregnant.

"But, unlike many women, I'd never tell people I was pregnant until after 12 weeks."

Katie went on to complete the course in a respectable threehours 40minutes. Although obviously devoted to her kids—a big part of the reason she turned down a place in the Apprentice final—giving birth did not warm Katie to the delights of babies.

"Very young children are dull," she said. "They're just there, like a little blob. A baby that age does three things, it eats, it s***s, it sleeps."

But she described her time now—with India approaching three, and Poppy nearing two—as "brilliant".

"I think the age my children are now is the best," she explained. "When they get to one they start talking, forming opinions and having a conversation with you. You start to see their personalities. It's fantastic.

"I find motherhood brilliant. And you CAN be a working mother. I love the time I spend with my kids, but I couldn't spend ALL my time at home with them. It's not enough for me."

So what's next for Katie? "I always expected I'd do well on the Apprentice," she said. "It's just a shame that the true winner won't be crowned the winner.

"But I'd love to be a Tory MP...I'm a massive fan of Margaret Thatcher."

We'd never have guessed...