AFTER five months in jail during which she scrubbed floors, earned 12 cents an hour and shared a prison cell with a cocaine dealer, Martha Stewart, the American homemaking icon, was released 20lb thinner, $700 million (£368 million) richer and with prime-time television clamouring for her return.

Stewart, 63, who seemed ruined in July after being convicted of lying about a stock sale, flew home to her $16 million, 153-acre New York estate in a private jet, aware that her stint in jail had been one of the best moves of her career.

Since she was sentenced Stewart, who built a multimillion-dollar empire catering to those searching for domestic perfection, has seen the share price of her company more than triple: she is a billionaire again.

She is to appear in two television shows, has publishers desperate for her memoirs and will market new lines of merchandise to a public ready to embrace the once-haughty, but now human, high priestess of the home.

She was driven from her low-security prison in Alderson, West Virginia, to her private jet at 12.30am. She had swapped prison fatigues for high-heeled leather boots, jeans and a grey knitted poncho. Her aides would not confirm reports that Frederic Fekkai, her hairdresser, had flown in specially. But it was inconceivable that her immaculate hair had emerged from a prison shower room. Once home, Stewart made an appearance before a throng of reporters and shouted: “It feels great to be home. Do you guys want any coffee or doughnuts?” She also said that after five months without a cappuccino, she got home to find that her cappuccino machine did not work.

Stewart will spend the next five months under house arrest wearing an electronic ankle bracelet so that her movements can be monitored. But she will be allowed to leave the estate — where Richard Gere and Ralph Lauren are neighbours — for up to 48 hours a week.

Next week she will begin filming a reality television show: her own version of The Apprentice. NBC has syndicated it to 85 per cent of the country. She will also star in a revival of her own homemaking show, her company will resume paying her $900,000 annual salary and she will be the main feature of her own magazine.

All this seemed impossible in October when Stewart voluntarily went to jail, rather than remain free on appeal (it will be heard on March 17).

After being convicted of lying about the timely sale of her ImClone shares, part of a bigger insider-trading scandal, stock in her company fell below $11. CBS dropped her show and advertisers deserted her magazine: she appeared finished.

But yesterday shares in Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, of which she owns 30 million, opened at $33.95. She has put together a team to facilitate her rehabilitation and named Susan Lyne, an ex-ABC executive who commissioned the hit show Desperate Housewives (which includes a character based on Stewart) as her company’s new chief executive.

Stewart has been skilful in reminding America why it originally became captivated by her. While in jail she taught fellow inmates yoga, wrote their letters, scoured the grounds for dandelion greens and crab apples to make salads, learnt to cook with a microwave and ate vending- machine chicken. She even lost a Christmas decorating contest.

But despite its rising share price, her company is in a bad financial state. Last month it announced a record loss of $60 million for 2004, nearly ten times its 2003 loss.

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