Gennifer Flowers discovers life after Bill in the Big Easy

"It was just one of those things," sings the blonde chanteuse in the packed French Quarter piano bar. "Just one of those crazy things."

And now the woman who achieved international celebrity because of just one of those flings with former president Bill Clinton has finally bounced back with a new career as a saloon bar owner and torch singer.

Gennifer Flowers came to prominence in 1992 when news of her 12-year affair with Mr Clinton emerged as he was running for the presidency. Her name, along with those of Monica Lewinsky and Paula Jones, has since been inextricably linked with that of the former president.

Now she has a new home and career in her New Orleans bar, assuring night-time revellers in the Big Easy that she ain't misbehavin' and explaining why the lady is a tramp.

Ms Flowers, 52, and her stockbroker husband, Finis Shelnutt, opened the Gennifer Flowers Kelsto Club on St Louis Street in the French Quarter two months ago. The bar's logo is a representation of Ms Flowers' lips.

After singing half a dozen songs, Ms Flowers takes her seat at the piano bar with an icy beer and a slim cigarette and explains her new life. "I've had a lot of lies told about me," she says. "They made me into this dragon... But the truth will set you free."

For years after the revelations, she says, her life was made hard by "FOBs" (friends of Bill) and she found herself "uninvited" to events in her previous home towns of Little Rock and Dallas. She found herself on the move, unable to settle. "But people have welcomed me here and made me feel at home. I love it here."

Her Road-to-New Orleans moment came, she says, when she was visiting a friend, antique dealer Chuck Robinson, who owns one of the Quarter's oldest houses. There she saw a copy of the John Singer Sargent portrait of a local woman, Virginie Avegno Gautreau, known as "Madame X", who created scandals in her day and with whom she felt a strange affinity. She decided this was a sign.

She started singing in church at the age of five and did her first recording when she was 11, she explains, before briefly detaching herself from her seat at the piano to pose for a photo with tourists or to kiss blushing young men.

Ever the gracious hostess, she does a couple of Happy Birthday To You requests, one of them performed with little-girl voice and feather boa in the style of Marilyn Monroe's serenade of John F Kennedy.

"I"m sure she was murdered by the mob," she says afterwards, "but don't get me started on that."

No one has been able to silence Ms Flowers. She wrote a best-selling book and has been on talk shows around the world. There was a small part in a film and there is a website (www.genniferflowers.com) which contains her motto: "There is more to life than to survive... we must thrive."

A tourist from Atlanta stops by to hug Ms Flowers and tell her: "My hat is off to you, Gennifer." A young man tells her: "I've come all the way from Philadelphia to see you."

She is persuaded to pick up the mike again and sing the Patsy Cline classic Crazy. Her husband watches proudly from the bar.

She has, says Chuck Robinson, attracted a clientele that includes "lawyers, judges, policemen" as well as tourists.

She is not the only woman to discover life after the Clinton headlines. Monica Lewinsky has been publicising a new documentary putting her side of the story and continues with her handbag business.

And if the former president were to pop by the bar, Ms Flowers says, he would be welcome with or without his saxophone - as long as his credit card was good. She might even sing No Regrets for him.

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