Imran Khan and Reham Khan

"I was told specifically by a senior adviser: they basically wanted me to be in the kitchen, to be cooking chapatis and not to be seen ever again," Ms Khan told Sunday Times.

The 62-year-old's marriage to Ms Khan was his second after his first marriage with English heiress Jemima Goldsmith for nine years ended in divorce in June, 2004.

Ms Khan, a divorced mother of three, left a job on regional BBC news and moved back to Pakistan in 2013.

Her career was a constant problem, particularly when she became an "ambassador for street children" in Peshawar. "There wasn't any involvement, I never attended meetings or anything of the sort, but obviously there was insecurity," Ms Khan said.

But she still upset Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) early on when a journalist questioned her about problems in her first marriage. Asked in an interview if she had been the victim of domestic abuse, she "didn't want to lie" and said yes. "I answered as diplomatically as I could, being a politician's wife," she told the paper.

But the media storm that followed upset Mr Khan's party. His response was silence, she said. "I was told not to defend myself, to let it die down," Ms Khan said. But the "attacks escalated".

"I tried to talk to him (Imran Khan). I'm very talkative and I'm very chatty but, you know, you can't exactly with Imran Khan. You can't discuss the colour of the curtains; you can only talk politics. You cannot exactly discuss Bollywood films with him. God knows I tried," she said.

Ms Khan said she plans to continue her work with street children in Pakistan, and is producing two films.

"I have to make up for loss of income. I married a man who convinced me that he loved me, who looked lonely and who I thought had the same ideas about life and the same goals, but we were just too different," she said.