Martha Lane Fox reveals hate campaign

Martha Lane Fox, poster girl of the dotcom boom, has revealed that the flotation of her company Lastminute.com in 2000 – she netted £13m when the company was sold a few years later – wasn’t all smiles, especially as the company’s share price collapsed shortly after its stock exchange listing. "I got really vicious hate email, really nasty stuff, and I got thousands of them," she says. "Combined with the Daily Express and Daily Mail headlines saying ‘biggest bitch’ or whatever."

Worse was to come for Fox, 35, who now runs a Tokyo-style karaoke company called Lucky Voice, as well a handful of charitable businesses. In 2004 she was involved in a horrific car crash, the effects of which she has to deal with everyday. She still cannot walk without a stick. “My friends all tease me,” she tells the Guardian, "because I have now got a new epithet of brave Martha or tragic Martha, having gone through dotcom Martha. I can’t stand it."