Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned

And so it is that Blears has joined the growing ranks of women who have reflected that it is better not to get mad but to get even. Ivana Trump had an interesting take on this, advising women who were confronted by a cheating husband: “Don’t get mad get everything!” In fact history is littered with examples of women who have become ever more creative at evening the score against male adversaries, whether they are an unfair boss or an unfaithful lover.

Revenge by destruction

There must be few women who can claim to have wreaked so much revenge on so many of their husband’s possessions as Lady Sally Graham-Moon. In 1992 Sally was enraged after her husband Sir Peter left her and moved in with his new girlfriend. So one night at 3am she poured five litres of white gloss paint over his prized blue BMW. She then took a pair of scissors to his 32 Savile Row suits, chopping a sleeve off each one. Finally she raided his wine cellar and gave away the contents, including bottles of Chateau Latour 1961 worth £300, to their neighbours. “I’m normally quite in control of my emotions,” she said at the time. “In fact I am quite shocked by what I have done.” Not as shocked as her husband.

Nick Faldo’s former lover Brenna Cepelak was of a similar mind when the golfer left her for Valerie Bercher, who became his third wife. She took a nine iron and battered his Porsche, causing £10,000 of damage.

Revenge by eBay

When Hayley Shaw, the wife of radio DJ Tim Shaw, heard him flirtatiously tell glamour girl Jodie Marsh, on air that he’d leave his wife for her she took swift action. She put his £25,000 Lotus Esprit Turbo up for sale on eBay for the princely sum of 50p. She added in a note: “I need to get rid of this car immediately – ideally in the next two to three hours before my husband gets home to find it gone and all his belongings in the street.” She later told a local newspaper: “The car is his pride and joy but the idiot put my name on the logbook. I am sick of being disrespected.”

Revenge by the pen

Back in 2002 Edwina Currie delivered the shocking bombshell that 14 years previously she’d had an affair with John Major, the former prime minister famed for being boring. She spilled the beans in the pages of her diaries saying she was angry for two reasons: for being brushed aside for promotion during Major’s premiership and then for being airbrushed out of Major’s own memoirs in 2002. Hell hath no fury like a woman omitted from an autobiography.

Meanwhile Margaret Cook, former wife of Robin Cook, wrote her own memoirs after her husband left her for Gaynor Regan, his former secretary. She accused her husband of having a string of affairs, of drinking heavily and of suffering impotency.

Revenge by the knife

Possibly one of the most notorious examples of female revenge is the case of Lorena Bobbitt. In 1993 Bobbitt exacted a grisly retribution on her husband – whom she accused of being violent, abusive and drunk – by taking a carving knife and cutting off half his penis while he slept. She then drove off from their home in Virginia in the US and threw the item out of the car window into a field. Struck by the magnitude of her action she then dialled the police. The penis was found and surgically re-attached to her husband who then took his wife to court. She was acquitted of malicious wounding but ordered to attend a mental hospital for 45 days.

Revenge in song

Carly Simon led the way when it came to settle old scores using the medium of song. Her classic 1972 hit featured the chorus: “You’re so vain/ You probably think this song is about you.” It has variously been thought to refer to Warren Beatty, Mick Jagger, Kris Kristofferson and James Taylor but Beatty declared, somewhat vainly, in 2007: “Let’s be honest: that song was about me.”

Lily Allen meanwhile is making a career out of slating past boyfriends in her songs. Her latest single, Not Fair, focuses on a relationship with a man who is somewhat disappointing in the boudoir. “When we go up to bed you’re just no good,” she sings sweetly, while admitting the man in question “is far too arrogant to even consider that it might be about him”.

Jerry Hall has also dipped her toe into this particular revenge pool by recording a track called Around This Table in 2005 which drew spooky parallels with her ex Mick Jagger, being about the breakdown of a marriage and mentioning a husband who takes lovers while his wife is out of town.

Revenge via e-mail

In May 2005 Jenny Amner, the secretary of high-earning City solicitor Richard Phillips, accidentally spilt ketchup on his trousers at lunch. The next day he wrote her an e-mail demanding the £4 it cost him to dry-clean them. When he got no reply he chased her up by popping a Post-It note on her desk. It was at this point that the secretary sent her own e-mail – to her boss and the entire 250 staff of their floor: “With reference to the e-mail below I must apologise for not getting back to you straightaway but due to my mother’s sudden illness, death and funeral I have had more pressing issues than your £4,” she wrote. “I apologise again for accidentally getting a few splashes of ketchup on your trousers. Obviously your financial need as a senior associate is greater than mine as a mere secretary.”

The e-mail was pinged from one computer to the next through the City and Phillips was soon labelled the nation’s stingiest boss. He has since left the company.

Revenge in the papers

When she discovered that her husband Rod Liddle, former editor of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, was having an affair journalist Rachel Royce decided to send 10 sacks of manure to his workplace. She then decided to write prolifically about her husband in the pages of a newspaper, detailing his infidelities, lies and the fact she had discovered a packet of Viagra in his pocket. She also referred to his girlfriend as “The Slapper”.

French actress Isabelle Adjani took a similar route after she became aware that her fiancé , musician Jean-Michel Jarre, had been unfaithful. He read that she had discovered his affair on the cover of Paris Match where Adjani also informed him (and the world) that their engagement was off.

Revenge in the post

Former X Factor judge Sharon Osbourne has owned up to a particularly dirty sort of revenge: sending her own excrement, often neatly packaged up in a Tiffany box, through the post. After one journalist irked her recently she included a note saying: “I hear you don’t like eating your words. Well, eat this.” She added: “Wait til you’ve earned millions and millions and are dripping with diamonds and mansions and talent show credits: Then you can have a view.” Who knew you had to be rich to have an opinion?