Miss Titmuss regrets but she is unable to dress today. The last man who led her so far astray, a retired footballer named Lee Sharpe, informs me that she is sorry to be delayed but she just can’t decide what to wear. So for more than an hour Abi Titmuss does what she does best: sits on her bed in the draughtiest of smalls, hangs her head and moans.

It is 10am but my new mate Lee is only half-dressed and looks shagged out. He makes coffee in the sitting room of Abi’s house while the chatelaine wrestles with her weighty dilemmas upstairs. He says how relieved he is to be free of the constant surveillance of Celebrity Love Island, which broadcast to the nation his courting of Miss T.

But Love Island and London life are bedfellows of sorts. You see, Al-Qaeda has subjected our capital to its deadliest bombing since the Luftwaffe but Londoners are stoically going about their normal business: in the case of the paparazzi, they are embedded outside Titmuss Towers while the source of their interest — and income — carries on stoically, earning fortunes for flashing her flesh. If that ain’t defying Osama Bin Laden, what is?

The sitting room in this small but perfectly formed mews house — bought with the £1m she has earned in the past year — is dominated by a blown-up cover of Style, featuring Abi, 28. A half-consumed bottle of Pinot Grigio rests by a giant sofa and bag from Agent Provocateur. Her library comprises a dozen volumes (Bridget Jones’s Diary, a tribute to Robbie Williams). Her infamous John Leslie video of threesome sex is not visible, but there is one of Richard & Judy and another called Dumb & Dumber.

Yes, okay, I’m snooping now, but Lee has disappeared and the coffee’s cold. I find a card featuring Mae West proclaiming: “A 41-inch bust and a lot of presence will get you more than a cup of coffee — a lot more, but most girls don’t know what to do with it.”

A charge of ignorance that could hardly be levelled at Titmuss who bounces in wearing something suitably ventilated. She was dubbed “Flabi Titmuss” on the island, but perhaps Lee has been giving her exercise tips as she has worked off any excess weight. Viewers of Love Island felt she must be on some kind of performance-related pay, the amount rising every time she snogged our Lee. But perhaps she just enjoyed it, judging by her kiss goodbye.

Lee, as one might expect of a distinguished footballer, has a meeting with his publisher. His girlfriend is also an author these days, having written Ten Fantasies, a collection of erotic short stories published, naturally, by Virgin. “Are you coming back?” she asks Lee. “Have you got a key?” She turns to me and whispers: “Now he is the man of the house.” Blimey, how a tabloid would love to be here (her publicist claims she has graced 82 newspaper front pages and 45 magazine covers in a year).

Should a serious newspaper be here? Well, yes, for while ITV studied her cleavage, a Channel 4 documentary pondered her celebrity; you may deplore the phenomenon, but boy is she a phenomenon. That phenomenon is making filthy lucre from relentless titillation. History has had its women of the bedchamber — from Nell Gwyn to Faria Alam — but most end in penury. Titmuss won’t because she has cracked the secret: how to profit from an inability to blush. Even her agency is called Money Management.

A couple of centuries ago she might have been a courtesan. “Yeah, a courtesan stealing the silver on the side,” she corrects. Now there is no need for theft: she has shown that where there’s mucky pictures, there’s brass.

There is no polite way of asking a variation of that famous George Bernard Shaw question: but would you sleep with a man for a million big ones, Abi? “No,” she bristles, moving down the sofa. “I’m not a prostitute. Would you ask another model that question?” Moments earlier she had been smiling, but her blue eyes have turned colder than the North Sea: an impressive show of moral outrage from a sometime presenter of a porn show.

However, this is a woman who has learnt there is no point standing on her dignity when she can make more lying lasciviously in La Perla. “I’m sorry I was so defensive,” she says, edging closer again.

So, sweetest, how have you been so successful with so little talent? “Sorry, before I answer that, could we swap places?” She motions to the photographer: “I look better from the other side.” And there I have my answer: a remorseless willingness to display her physical charms.

“What is the Titmuss factor? I think I just have a great pair of personalities,” she laughs. But there are plenty of girls with similar attributes. “Yes, and probably prettier,” she admits. “But I was real. They thought, ‘Yeah, a nurse taking her clothes off’. It helped that I was curvy; my appeal was a bit girl-next-door, unlike certain models who are ultra-thin and have plastic surgery.”