Carrie Prejean threatens to walk off Larry King Live

Former beauty queen Carrie Prejean's campaign to sell her memoir, Still Standing, is in danger of making her an American laughing-stock. An appearance on Larry King Live this week turned into a PR disaster, with Prejean taking off her microphone and threatening to walk out. And an interview in Christianity Today has been dissected by American journalists in search of such tidbits as: "I don't see anywhere in the Bible where it says you shouldn't get breast implants."

First, Larry King. Prejean had already taken the chance to plug Still Standing, waving the book about in front of the camera, when King asked why she had settled a lawsuit with the producers of Miss California USA, whom she had sued after being fired this summer.

"It's completely confidential and you're being inappropriate," said Prejean. "I think that you're being extremely inappropriate right now and I'm about to leave your show."

Prejean started talking to a publicist off-camera and then removed her microphone. After an ad break she eventually returned but refused to answer questions from viewers, which King had promised the audience she would do.

What Prejean was avoiding was another discussion about the much-reported settlement earlier this month when lawyers for K2 Productions, producers of the Miss California pageant, confronted her with a video which depicted Prejean, aged 17, in a "solo sex act".

Until that moment, Prejean's case against K2 was "religious discrimination". She felt she had lost her Miss California crown because of the controversial comment she made earlier in the year when she told the gossip-meister Perez Hilton that she felt marriage should be between a man and a woman.

K2 were out to prove that the reason they had fired her was because she had broken the standard beauty queen contract, which stipulates that the contestant must never have appeared in nude photos or porn videos.

It was reported by TMZ.com, who broke the story of the lawyers' gambit, that the lawsuit was settled within seconds of the sex tape being shown to Prejean. Just to make the episode even more embarrassing for the 22-year-old, her mother was also attending the meeting at which the tape was shown.

Earlier this week, Prejean went on Sean Hannity's Fox News show and NBC's Today programme to explain how she had shot the video to send to her boyfriend at the time. "It was for private use," she told NBC. "But does that justify what I did? No. It was the biggest mistake of my life. It was me by myself. There was no one else with me. I was not having sex.

"You can call it whatever you want to call it. If you want to call it a sex tape, that's fine. I sent it to my boyfriend at the time. I was a teenager. I cared about him. I trusted him ... I think now they call it 'sexting'."

But she clearly did not want to discuss it again with Larry King. As her appearance spluttered into chaos, observers were asking why she had agreed to appear in the first place.

Now to the interview in Christianity Today, the "magazine of evangelical conviction". This is Carrie putting the record straight on three key issues:

♦ On whether she hates gays and lesbians: "I've never said that I hated gays... I have hairdressers who are gay. I live in California."

♦ On the sex tape revelation: "No one's perfect. Everyone's made mistakes... We as Christians need to stick together and realise that the Enemy is powerful."

♦ On her breast implants: "I don't think there's anything wrong with getting breast implants as a Christian... I don't see anywhere in the Bible where it says you shouldn't get breast implants."