irritating she finds tabloid interest in her private life.

According to Kommersant, the Russian business paper, Zhukova has been involved in developing content and recommending what will appeal to female readers of Spletnik. The site claims to have 10,000 unique users a day.

Zhukova's involvement comes through fellow socialite Polina Deripaska. She is the wife of Oleg Deripaska, the aluminium king who is Russia's youngest billionaire. Polina is on the board of Moscow's Forward Media Group, which, as well as running Spletnik, publishes more than 1m magazines a month, including Russian Hello!.

Zhukova's involvement in Spletnik is fascinating in view of some of its content. You can search alphabetically for celebrities on the site and if you look under the Russian letter 'Zh' for 'Zhukova'

there is a host of paparazzi pictures of a bikini-clad Dasha hanging out with Abramovich on various yachts. In one memorable shot she has borrowed Abramovich's day-glo orange trunks (see previous page).

The pictures represent exactly the attention she complains about from the British tabloids. Zhukova is obviously not averse to invading her own privacy if she is in control.

A Russian journalist told me around the time of Abramovich's divorce that the oligarch is capable of blocking any pictures he wants. "He would always be the highest bidder. The photographer might not even know who they're being sold to." This perhaps explains why pictures of Dasha and Roman in Paris around the time of sensitive divorce negotiations 'vanished' overnight.

The fact that new paparazzi shots of the two of them are surfacing on Spletnik only goes to show what a savvy businesswoman the 26-year-old Russian is. There is a market for these pictures: how satisfying to be pulling the strings yourself.