by Laurent Thomet
ALDERSON, West Virginia - US lifestyle guru Martha Stewart was released from jail Friday, after serving a five-month sentence for lying about a dodgy stock sale, to star in a new television show and spend another five months under house arrest.
Stewart made no comments to reporters and paparazzi waiting outside the minimum security prison inmates have knicknamed "Camp Cupcake," as she drove by at 12:30am (0530 GMT) on her way to a private jet at a local airport for her two-hour flight home to Bedford, New York.
In fact, nobody was aware she was inside one of several cars that drove out of the federal prison at the time. Prison authorities issued a statement about the release a few moments later.
She waved to reporters when she arrived at the airport wearing jeans and a knit poncho. Her daughter Alexis was at her side.
Stewart`s time in jail officially ends Sunday, but the federal prisons bureau can release prisoners on a Friday if their sentences end over the weekend, prison authorities said.
Stewart will serve five more months under house arrest at her 62-hectare (163-acre) country estate. She will have to wear an electronic ankle bracelet tracking her movements.
Stewart may leave the property for 48 hours a week for work, which she already has lined up.
Indeed, Stewart, 63, has won a contract to host a knock-off of tycoon Donald Trump`s successful NBC television reality show "The Apprentice."
She will also star in a show focusing on the same topics that she built into a multi-million dollar lifestyle empire -- cooking, entertaining, decorating and home renovating.
"People love redemption stories," said "The Apprentice" producer Mark Burnett. "You pay your price and Americans allow you to move on."
In an interview in 2003, ABC television journalist Barbara Walters asked Stewart: "Why do so many people hate you?"
"Well, the people you think hate me, don`t know me," Stewart said. "It`s hard to describe. I mean, I don`t know why people don`t like me. I`m not perfect."
She also defended her management style in an interview with ABC television before her trial, conceding that she may sometimes be "insensitive."
"But I have a job to do," she added. "And I may sometimes really think that others should work as hard as I work or concentrate as much as I concentrate. But those traits and that behavior, if it were applied to a man, would be admirable. Applied to a woman, you know, she`s a bitch."
The businesswoman was convicted in March last year of lying to federal agents investigating her sale of nearly 4,000 shares in biotechnology company ImClone Systems. She began serving her sentence in October.
Newsweek noted her post-conviction fame this week in its cover headline: "Martha`s Last Laugh: After Prison, She`s Thinner, Wealthier and Ready for Prime Time."
Shares of the Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSO) empire, which she founded, have quadrupled in value since her sentencing in July. Company shares were up 6.65 percent Thursday, reaching 34.17 dollars in afternoon trading.
In March 2004, she resigned as the company`s director and "chief creative officer" while accepting a new position of "founding editorial director."
According to Stewart`s aides, the empire`s founder is very optimistic about her future.
"This year, we usher in spring with an extra measure of gratitude, because the month of March not only marks the vernal equinox on the 20th and the real start of our Northeast growing season, but also Martha`s homecoming," Margaret Roach, editor in chief of Martha Stewart Living, wrote in the magazine`s March edition.
Roach recounted some of Stewart`s prison activities.
"The tales were always surprising," she said.
Stewart foraged for wild greens "to augment the limited fresh vegetable offerings in the diet there," helped decorate the chapel for a memorial service and made microwave meals with whatever ingredients were available.
She also launched a yoga class that she taught for 10 inmates.
Roach even told how Stewart had carried out a yoga pose called "downward-facing dog" in the visitors` room at the prison "from which she seamlessly moved into a headstand."

03/04/2005 09:05 GMT