The country's biggest-selling popular title Expressen carried a total of six photographs chronicling the row with Stan Collymore. "The Swedes have taken her to their hearts," explained an English journalist working in Stockholm. "They feel that way about anyone who makes it big outside Sweden, and they go mad about Eurovision too. They have not forgotten the glory days of Abba."And it is this Swedish background that may hold the key to Ulrika's career. After all, if you grow up until the age of 12 in a culture that the British habitually look down upon with a sneering sense of cultural superiority, then appearing to be "in on the joke" might well start to become important.A chubby young Ulrika first came to Britain in her pre-teen orthodontic braces to join her mother, Gun. Some years earlier Gun had left Ulrika's father, a Stockholm driving instructor called Bo, and eventually remarried, to an Englishman.

But before the eight-year-old Ulrika was able to join her mother in a new family environment overseas, she had to cope alone for four years with her father's fast-food diet and his series of new girlfriends.Once in Britain, Ulrika did well at school and got three good A-levels before deciding not to go on to Goldsmiths College to study French and drama. Instead, she took the job of secretary to the erratic media mogul Bruce Gyngell, who was then in charge of TV-am.Her looks quickly marked her out as a natural in front of the camera and within a couple of years she had distinguished herself as the prototype Scandinavian weather girl. Around this time she featured memorably in a series of soppy advertisements for shampoo, selling a heartfelt line about the importance of shiny hair. Then, in 1992, came her first high- profile job, as presenter of ITV's camply ludicrous Gladiators show.Although she was confident and competent, Ulrika was still teetering on the brink of trashy cult obscurity when Vic and Bob plucked her into trendyland and made her a team captain in Shooting Stars. Ulrika's very wholesomeness was the initial joke, and she gamely accepted their lustful and demeaning on-screen advances.

Loud burps and farting noises were the order of the day and Ulrika had the perceptiveness to see where the humour, silly though it was, had its roots. "They still fear women, but it is their show and they are able to do exactly what they like," she once said.Her one-off comedy show, It's Ulrika, was written by Vic and Bob but was not a roaring success. Scriptwriters who have worked with her on TV shows confirm she is not an instinctive comic. "To be honest, I am not sure she really has enough grasp of English vocabulary to actually understand or write good jokes," said one. "I mean, I didn't go to university myself, but going through the script there were always one or two words that she was not familiar with, and they weren't that esoteric."All agree, however, that Ulrika's manner is friendly and unstarry, even if her jolly banter does tend to centre on her own sexual appeal. "She tended to make lots of references to the fact that all the men in the team wanted to shag her," another writer recalls.