Presley: 'I loved Jackson, but he used me'

She claims that initially, Jackson appeared normal and, like any married couple, they had sex "for a while".

But the honeymoon, which occurred in the middle of allegations that Jackson had sexually molested Jordan Chandler, then 13, proved short-lived and the daughter of the rock and roll legend Elvis Presley now believes she was used by the scandal-scarred singer in a bid to improve his image.

Presley, 38, whose third marriage last year to the Hollywood actor Nicholas Cage, an Elvis fanatic, ended after just three months, has never spoken publicly before about her 1995 union with Jackson.

Speaking to Rolling Stone magazine, she said Jackson approached her when she was in her teens, but she "thought he was too weird" and spurned his advances.

Years later, Presley, who was married to Danny Keough, a musician, and bringing up their children, Danielle, now 13, and Ben, ten, received word Jackson wanted her to hear a demo tape he had recorded.

She said: "He was very real with me off the bat. He immediately went into this whole explanation of what he knew people thought of him and what the truth was."

At the time, Jackson, who last month told Martin Bashir, a television interviewer, that he saw nothing wrong with sharing his bed with young boys, was being investigated by police over allegations of molesting Jordan and other young boys.

Presley says Jackson confided in her and, like a "lioness", she wanted to protect him. "I got into this whole ‘I’m going to save you’ thing. I thought all the stuff he was doing - philanthropy and the children thing and all this stuff - was awesome.

"OK. Hello. I was delusionary. I got some romantic idea in my head I could save him and we could save the world."

Jackson wooed her with chocolates and flowers. The ruse worked and Presley admits she left Keough "probably quicker than I would have. And that was probably one of the bigger mistakes of my whole life". Now she says Jackson was probably trying to use her to clean up his tarnished image.

"I did fall in love with him. I can’t tell you what his intentions were. But I can tell you I absolutely fell in love with him and fell into this whole thing which I’m not proud of now."

She constantly reassured Jackson, saying: "People wouldn’t think I was so crazy if they saw who the hell you really were; that you sit around and you drink and you curse and you’re funny, and you have a bad mouth and you don’t have that high voice all the time."

The marriage lasted less than a year. Presley says she got her first wake-up call at an MTV awards show when Jackson put on a show of kissing her for the cameras. "It was his manager’s idea. I thought it was stupid. All of a sudden I became part of a PR machine," she said. "I was really into this lioness thing with him - I wanted to protect him. Naive as hell. I never thought for a moment someone like him could actually use me."

Then the singer, who paid Jordan and his parents some 20 million to withdraw their lawsuit and police complaint against him, started disappearing for weeks at a time. "It just got really ugly at the end," said Presley.

Ironically, the final straw came when Jackson, whose ever-changing appearance has been the source of much speculation, told a magazine that Elvis had had a nose job.

Presley, who inherited 80 million on her 30th birthday, returned to Keogh and then became engaged to John Oszajca, a struggling musician, before marrying Cage, 39, last year.

Describing Cage as a hothead, she said: "We’re both so dramatic and dynamic that when it was good it was unbelievably good. And when it was bad, it was just a bloody nightmare for everybody. "

And she added: "If you lined up all the men I’ve been with in a row you’d think that I was completely psychotic."