"If he got the result he wanted, he'd let out a lion roar and jump up and punch the air. It was on those occasions, he'd be particularly wild in bed, " says his ex-mistress Jackie 'Legs' Robinson.

The police would sit outside the house as the bedroom curtains closed. Officers would cheer when Adair and his lover eventually emerged. "I suppose the security forces call that surveillance, but I call it voyeurism, " says Robinson. "It began to annoy me, especially if they beeped their horns, so I'd pull off my top and show them my tits."

For eight years, Jackie Robinson . . . nicknamed 'Legs' because of her short skirts . . . was the mistress of the Shankill UDA leader whose 'C' company murdered up to 40 Catholics. 'Yabbadabbado, any Fenian will do' was the slogan.

Robinson's book about her affair, In Love with a Mad Dog, co-written with Dublin journalist June Caldwell, has just been published. "There were plenty of women like me, women who had relationships with paramilitaries. It's time we told our stories, " she says.

"A lot of people will judge me.

I'm not stupid, I knew what Johnny was doing, but I switched off, I blanked it out.

People might think I'm guilty by association but I never murdered anybody. Other women have stood by rapists and child abusers."

Robinson's book reveals more about loyalist paramilitarism than all the heavy political tomes that have preceded it. The door opens on a sordid world of sex and sectarianism, where morality had been extinguished. There is no republican equivalent.

After his father dies, Adair's mistress calls to pay her respects. She bends over the coffin to kiss the dead man's forehead. Adair is sexually stimulated and later described to her what he wanted to do to her at that moment.

On 26 October 1993, two Catholic workers died when the UDA opened fire on a bin depot in west Belfast. "Take that you b***ards!" the gunman said. It was C Company's birthday present to Adair, who turned 30 the next day. "Johnny was a wee bit disappointed with the body count, " Robinson says. Once, he stopped his car to urinate on the Falls. The message was:

"we'll piss on your patch as well as kill you".

Walking into her immaculate flat in east Belfast, it is hard to believe the woman standing there did or tolerated such things. The mini-skirts have been abandoned. She's about to become a grandmother and is modestly dressed in jeans and a cream sweater.

She no longer drinks or does drugs. Indeed, she rarely goes out. Only a picture of Marilyn Monroe and a poster of legs in stockings and stilettos, emblazoned with the word 'Diva', betray a racier past.

She's a chatty, bright woman who hopes to go to university next year to study psychology and criminology . . . "I've the experience, " she says. Even when recounting crudity, Robinson (49) bizarrely doesn't come across as a vulgar person.

Her softly-spoken 70-year-old mother sits on the sofa as her daughter describes sex with Adair as "animalistic but gentle". "Carry on Jackie, I'm reading the paper, " she says.

'Bubbles', the budgie, is perched in his cage in the corner. He was drugged and smuggled (in someone's trousers) into Maghaberry prison to keep Adair, 43, company.

"He looks out the window shouting 'up the Shankill' and 'go on ye b***ards, '" says Robinson. "He's a nutter."

It wasn't love at first sight when Jackie met Johnny in Taughmonagh social club: "I had a short black and pink dress on. He noticed me straight away, but I thought he was just a wee fat b***ard." Eventually, he won her over: "Look, if you met Johnny, you'd see why. He'd charm you, he'd charm the knickers off a nun.

"I often tried to give him up, but we were drawn together like magnets. One month when he was in jail, he ran up a £2,000 mobile bill phoning me. The UDA paid it. Sometimes, he was more like Mad Pup. He was like a child, lost and vulnerable. I comforted him."

She was both manipulated and manipulator. Robinson says Adair's favourite sexual fantasy was to pretend he was a schoolboy virgin propositioned by an older woman: " 'Please don't hurt me, Mrs, ' he'd say, 'I've to get home to my ma for tea.'" Adair and wife Gina continuously cheated on each other. Gina called Robinson "the auld dog with the white hair and good figure".

Robinson thought Gina "butch and a control freak . . .

he was a director of terrorism terrorised by his wife.

She'd goad him about having a small c**k.

'Jackie, is my c**k an okay size?'

he'd ask."

Given the calibre of Adair and C Company, the only possible explanation for them remaining free for so long was that the security forces turned a blind eye.

"Johnny wasn't brave, " says Robinson. "He was all talk when surrounded by his heavies, but, on his own, he couldn't beat Casey's drum. A republican prisoner offered him a fist-fight and he backed down.

"He still childishly sends postcards, taking the piss to old loyalist enemies in jail like the Shoukri brothers. But, when he was inside, the IRA north Belfast commander Eddie Copeland sent him a postcard saying: 'All right Johnny, it's sun, sea and sex for me. Hope you're enjoying your holiday in the Kesh.' Johnny went berserk.

"He couldn't cope with jail.

He was like a wild bird in a cage, his control gone. Soldiers don't complain, but he was a yappy b***ard. He had the charisma of a natural leader, but he wasn't smart. He was a brick short of a load."

Robinson says C Company partied endlessly after murders.

She recalls a middle-aged woman, who had never before used drugs, attending a party.

"She fell on the bathroom floor. One of the lads grabbed her, stuck her head down the toilet, and flushed it. Then, another grabbed her and threw her on the bed. She'd no knickers on. They were joking, saying 'Who wants to have a go at her?'

"They slashed her car tyres, cut the sleeves off her coat and filled the pockets with shit. Then.

they rang her daughter. 'We've just shagged your f***ing mother. She was right up for it.'" At another party, Adair poured petrol over a sleeping friend. "He woke up burning.

Johnny flung a bucket of water over him. He was good that way, making amends where he could.

He gave that bloke £70 to buy a new pair of designer jeans.

"Johnny ran errands for the elderly and he'd never walk by a homeless person without throwing them a few quid. 'Those poor smelly b***ards have nothing, ' he'd say." Robinson was arrested and interrogated by police, but insists she had no paramilitary involvement.

When Adair was in prison, she began shoplifting and credit card fraud. "We went on one trip to Dublin. We planned to do Roches Stores and Clery's.

We were spotted by the security guards in Roches but managed to get away."

On hearing rumours of Adair's bisexuality, Robinson quizzed him. "He asked would I mind. I told him I wouldn't care so long as he used protection. These men would have had more interest shaking hands with the IRA than using condoms."

Once Adair asked Robinson if she would let a prostitute, who was also in their car, perform a sex act on him. They split up in 2000 when Adair asked her to work in a loyalist brothel. "I told him I'd never sink so low and kicked him out." Robinson was twice in a psychiatric unit, something which she blames on her relationship with Adair.

Many people will think her unhinged for being with him in the first place. "My own background was turbulent. My parents' marriage broke up. My mother moved to England, my father couldn't cope and we were put in care for a while. Then, we joined my mother in England.

"I got married and had children young. When my marriage broke up, I came back to Northern Ireland. I fell in with C company. I took on a different personality. For the first time in my life, I was having fun."

Adair now lives in Scotland . . .

he faces execution by the UDA leadership if he comes home.

He has split from Gina (40), who has a lover 16 years younger. In the summer, Adair was spotted in Turkey with a twentysomething.

Last week, he called Robinson "a lunatic" and condemned the book. "Johnny's the lunatic, " she says. "He's living in a time warp. He can't accept the war's over." Isn't she frightened he might take revenge on her? "Johnny often threatened to put a bullet in my head, but he'll never harm me. He was recently asking about for my phone number. I don't love him now, but I once did. I loved him like nobody has ever loved him, and I know he loved me."