Meet Patty Hearst, champion dog-breeder

Newspaper heiress Patty Hearst gained international infamy in 1974 when she was caught helping her kidnappers, the Symbionese Liberation Army, during a bank robbery. Now it seems Hearst - who became a byword for Stockholm syndrome, in which hostages come to sympathise with their captors - has lost her heart to another cause, that of dog-breeding. Hearst's beloved dog Diva has won a medal for best French bulldog bitch at an international dog show in New York . “I have not completely lost my mind to the dog world, just my heart,” she said after the win at the Westminster Kennel Club show. “It can be very addictive.”

The granddaughter of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst (who was caricatured by Orson Welles in Citizen Kane), Hearst was 19 when she was allegedly dragged from her Berkeley flat and reportedly held in a cupboard for 57 days after her captors unsuccessfully tried to swap her for jailed members of their radical group. Hearst ended up joining her kidnappers in their cause and was jailed for two years for her part in the bank robbery.

Since then Hearst, a beneficiary of the family trust, has raised two daughters - one the model Lydia Hearst – and has appeared in several films made by her friend John Waters, including Serial Mom and - in an ironic piece of casting - as a kidnapper’s mother in Cecil B Demented. Recently she has devoted herself to breeding French bulldogs, with two litters already from Diva.

While people still recognise her from her days of notoriety, Hearst prefers to look forward: “Get with the time, the 21st century. I have moved on.” She added: “Young people know me from the films and TV. They have no idea about the kidnapping.”