AS first encounters go, it might have been made in Hollywood. At Munich's Hof-brauhaus beer hall they had just finished throwing out the drunken back-packers, American GIs and locals in lederhosen after an evening sinking litres of frothy beer.
In Harry's Bar, tucked away in a side-street around the corner, the atmosphere was different. While the piano man tickled the ivories, Boris ''the divine'' Becker, young god of German media, sat staring into his glass. He was fed up with fame and floozies and contemplating a career on the slide, when into his life walked the would-be actress who would change it.
Barbara Feltus-Ferbst was subtly different. She was young and beautiful, German and black. Becker claims that he only really noticed her skin colour ''sometime later'', glancing at her sleeping body sprawled against a white sheet. They were first ''outed'' as an ''item'' a month after that first meeting at the end of 1991, dancing together at a disco in Australia.
As Barbara was to learn, being on the arm of ''Boom-boom Boris'' meant being in the glare of more flashlights than had ever faced her on catwalk or stage. She soon discovered the rest of it. Within weeks the German tabloid press had winkled out all her ex-boyfriends, hoping - in vain - for a snatch of salacious gossip, and had scoured the cutting rooms of blue movie-makers in the hope of a few reels of Barbara in the buff.
All they found was a ''bra and panties'' shot of her modelling underwear; tame stuff but juicy enough out of context to make the front page of the mass daily Bild. Barbara was horrified but there was worse to come. An undercurrent in Germany resented theblond-haired, blue-eyed son of the fatherland being ''stolen by an alien''.
When they went to the carnival in Cologne in 1992, Barbara was subject to racist taunts in the street. ''Go back to the bush,'' cried one. ''Black witch, you only want Boris' money,'' screamed another. Becker reacted fiercely with a much-publicised warning about the damage the spectre of racism was doing to his country.