“John (Brown) was on the fourth floor. I knocked. My sleepy spouse opened the door and as he did, I lunged at him with my dressmaking scissors. Taken by surprise, but still quick enough to protect himself, John grabbed my wrist and dragged me inside the room, flung me onto the bed and held me down by both my arms as I struggled to claw at his face.”

Who among us has not fantasised about stabbing a politician, or one’s spouse, with a pair of scissors? Luckily, for Jan Murray, the-then wife of the federal tourism minister, she could do both.  On that occasion “Brownie” escaped, but it was not over.

A week later, he slipped into the family home to collect some clothes.

“I came at him with a carving knife in each hand. Julian intercepted the attack, slamming the bedroom door between his father and me just as I lunged. The knife marks were still in the door when the house was vacated some time later. If I was bluffing, I was convincing.”

All this, and more, is in Murray’s book, Sheer Madness, Sex, Lies and Politics, which was launched at NSW Parliament House last night, attended by a gaggle of supporters including Ita Buttrose, Charlotte Dawson, Gretel Killeen and Robert Hampshire. The book, published by Mills and Boon imprint Harlequin, reads exactly like one of its raunchier tomes, except that it is all true.

Murray left school at 14, was married at 20 and had five children in eight years before going back to university in her 30s and started a PR business. By the time she discovered that Brown had given his Gold Coast mistress $200,000 to start up a lingerie line, she was in the grips of a full-blown bi-polar disorder, culminating in violent assaults, being locked up in a psychiatric ward and two suicide attempts. You could not possibly make it up.

In her launch speech, PR consultant Prue McSween said that it was a “touching, sad, quite mad, hilarious, intelligent and inspiring book”.

On discovering feminism, Murray had hidden from Brown her copy of The Female Eunuch behind The Commonsense Cookery Book. Later, she was “taught by a bunch of lesbians at an unusual and modern version of a Tupperware party, how to have an org-sm”, she said.

“In Sheer Madness, the AVO was her MO. She stalked and plotted against (John’s) other women, punched a courier out and super-glued the locks at David Jones Parramatta because she was offended by something they had done.”

Murray, of course, is famous for driving from Sydney to Canberra to have s-x with Brown on his ministerial desk — revealed in the book as being formerly owned by John Curtin.  After the event, she left her underwear in the office next door, which happened to belong to the head of the department.

“I entered Mr Jones’s office and from my handbag I extracted my black lace perfumed knickers especially chosen back in Dundas earlier tonight for Operation Desk Job. I dropped the knickers in the big glass Lalique ashtray on the desk. The cleaners had gone and so I figured the permanent head would find my calling card tomorrow.”

McSween said that Murray was still outrageous.

“Such furniture fornication is not beyond her now … although these days it is more likely to be Bonds Cottontails and a Jason Recliner …”

In her speech, Murray, clad in pillar-box red, quoted Sam Goldwyn’s motto, “make ’em laugh, make ’em cry and make ’em pay”.

It was a great Sydney party — featuring many outstanding examples of that popular Sydney combination of blonde hair, big b-obs and Botox. Femmes du certain age — please — it’s time to look in the mirror. You need a new look.