"I'm coming home, I've done my time... and those yellow ribbons had better be tastefully displayed!" Martha Stewart will be released from prison on Sunday and the domestic diva will be able to return to work again - and the prospect of a dazzling new career.
Stewart, 63, has plans to revive her multimedia company and her daily homemaking show on television. But in partnership with reality TV inventor Mark Burnett she will star in her own version of The Apprentice, the hugely successful series in which millionaire Donald Trump fires aspiring executives on television.
After five months in prison in West Virginia Stewart will spend the next five months under home detention to complete her sentence. She has decided to live at her 153-acre estate at Katonah in upstate New York. Stewart will be free to resume working for the billion dollar company she created, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia and draw her annual salary of almost $1 million. Under her probation agreement she may work for 48 hours a week outside the house.
The woman behind a nationwide homewear and good-taste empire will however have to wear a rather unsightly fashion accessory - an electronic ankle bracelet. This will be monitored by probation officers to ensure she does not break the terms of her release. She will also be subject to random telephone calls to check if she is violating the ban during home detention hours, and she is also forbidden to vote or carry a gun.
The details of her movements will be agreed with probation officers early next week. She may use the grounds and hot houses at Kantona to make segments for her television programme, or make the 40-mile journey to Manhattan to present the series from a studio.
Taping the Apprentice show could involve huge logistical problems. Auditions have taken place in 27 cities and contestants have been told to be available for up to eight weeks during the period of house arrest.
Stewart, who was jailed in October for lying to investigators about selling stock in ImClone Systems in 2001 just before the share price collapsed, will be free to throw parties at home but may not consort with criminals.
She will be released just in time to begin planting her garden according to Margaret Roach, editor of Martha Stewart Living Magazine in the March edition. "She remains ever the can-do optimist," wrote Ms Roach, who outlined how Stewart spent her time in prison at Alderson.
"The same skills and interests that fill her time and make her life special at home - cooking, crafts, and gardening, as well as reading, exercising and trying to learn something new every day - have been the fabric of daily life at Alderson."
She said Stewart foraged for wild greens, such as dandelion, on the prison property to augment the limited fresh vegetable offerings in the diet there, decorated the chapel for a memorial service "with whatever remnants of the growing season nature had left behind by late fall" and cooked up impromptu recipes in the microwave with whatever very basic ingredients the commissary had for sale.
Stewart's multimedia company needs a boost. Though stock has tripled since the company's founder was taken to prison, last week it announced that in the fourth quarter of last year it lost $7.33 million or 15 cents per share. The company advised investors that it expects Martha Stewart Living Magazine, which accounted for about one-third of overall revenues last year, to show positive revenue and add page growth in the second quarter when Stewart resumes writing her monthly column.
Susan Lyne, president and chief executive of Martha Stewart Living, said the company would embrace its founder's unique skills, creativity, business instincts; and "her ability to understand the female buyer."
Stewart gave up her role as CEO and as director of her company after the share scandal but still owns about 60 per cent of the company's shares.
Her legal troubles are not over. The Securities and Exchange Commission has filed a complaint against Stewart and her stockbroker and a civil trial is possible, though most such cases are settled if the defendant accepts that he or she may never be CEO or director of a publicly-owned company again.
Stewart also faces a civil lawsuit from shareholders and has lodged an appeal against her conviction and sentence.
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