Perhaps not surprisingly, Linda McMahon prefers not to dwell on the more salacious aspects of her past, least of all that episode with the lingerie and the coffin, or the simulated lesbian sex.
Instead, the former chief executive of a wildly profitable television wrestling conglomerate has become one of the biggest surprises of the 2012 US elections, turning a seemingly hopeless quest for a Senate seat in the Democratic-controlled fiefdom of Connecticut into a potentially momentous Republican upset.
Ms McMahon, 64, first ran for the Senate in 2010, when she spent $US50 million from her personal fortune trying and failing to overcome the stigma of her past exploits as a wrestling magnate.
She threw her chequebook into the ring again this year. So far she has spent another $US27m, and to the consternation of Democrats she is fighting to the finish.
Her emergence as a credible Republican contender in a state that President Barack Obama is expected to win easily reflects a shift in attitudes to Ms McMahon's past as head of Worldwide Wrestling Entertainment.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, we know all about the smackdowns and the crotch kicks," said Pat Brewster, a contractor working on one of the mansions that line the shore of Long Island Sound in Greenwich, 50km east of New York. "People are tired of hearing that stuff. Business isn't great, and that lady knows plenty about business."
Ms McMahon has closed to within three points of her opponent, Chris Murphy, according to the Real Clear Politics website. Democratic strategists have called in heavyweight reinforcements. Former president Bill Clinton was due to campaign in Connecticut overnight
Ms McMahon's surge springs partly from a careful reshaping of her image - playing down her wrestling links while mentioning her grandchildren at every campaign stop - and partly from attacks on her rival.
She is also attempting what few Republican candidates have dared - to attract disillusioned Obama supporters by promoting her own comparatively moderate positions on issues such as abortion and gay marriage. Or as Mr Murphy's spokesman, Eli Zupnick, put it: "She is trying to hide her right-wing views."
Born to conservative parents who both worked on a Marine Corps base, Ms McMahon was 13 when she met Vince McMahon, a 16-year-old boy who became her husband weeks after she graduated from high school.
Vince's father was a wrestling promoter and after a couple of false starts, Linda and Vince took over the McMahon family business and turned it into an entertainment behemoth.
While Vince took much of the credit for dreaming up the comic pseudo-sporting theatrics that attracted a worldwide television audience, Linda oversaw the explosive corporate growth.
This year Mr Murphy initially refrained from harping on Ms McMahon's wrestling connections, but as she crept closer in the polls, the Democrats dug out old video clips of female wrestlers fondling each other and a male wrestler climbing into a coffin with a scantily-clad "corpse".
Ms McMahon stuck to a script that she was a "job creator" who was "proud of the business I helped build".
THE SUNDAY TIMES
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