scams, naked parties and more

Housewife diva Martha Stewart is ‘blatantly lying’ when she claims her ex-husband, longtime New York publisher Andrew Stewart, was unaware that she had betrayed him during their tumultuous 30-year marriage, a source told The Post exclusively.

“Andy certainly knew full well about all of Martha’s affairs and pseudo-affairs and her numerous flirtations from day one,” a close confidant of Andy’s told me. “He knew all the men who came and went in her life, real or fantasized. But there was no secret lover, as Marta claims. Andy knew everything Marta was doing, he was aware of every guy.

According to the insider, “Andy is just really pissed off” about Marta taking advantage of him and their failed marriage – Which ended over thirty years ago — promote “Marta” – the hugely popular Netflix documentary about her life, which begins streaming on Wednesday.

While promoting the film, 83-year-old Martha admitted to cheating on Andy during their marriage. She boasts that it was “very easy” to keep her alleged affair a secret from him for some thirty years and advises viewers, “You’ve got to be careful,” which means careful and risk-averse.

As the author of “Only desserts,” a New York Times bestseller about Martha, I revealed that she was, in fact, a risky person when it came to indiscretions outside of marriage.

Sources tell me, among other things, that Marta once eloped for the night with a handsome stranger she and Andy had met on their honeymoon in England, leaving the groom shocked and forced to sleep alone. She later allegedly did so host swinger-style pool parties – flirts and cuddles with male guests – at the Turkey Hill estate in Westport, Connecticut, which has become popular in her Martha Stewart Living magazine and on her television shows.

“The men pursuing Marta or her relationships, real or imagined, have never been a secret to Andy or the couple’s close friends,” the insider said. “Martha will do anything for publicity and to stay in the public eye as she gets older, even literally bragging publicly that she cheated on her husband. This is all very strange. Only a woman with little or no morals and no respect for the sanctity of marriage would brag like that just to get a movie made about her and gain media attention.”

They married in 1961, and five years later the Stewarts had a daughter, Alexis. But the marriage fell apart as Marta’s fame and independence grew. The Stewarts separated in 1987, and their acrimonious divorce was finalized in 1990.

Andy, now in his 80s, later married Martha’s assistant, Robin Fairclough, but this relationship also ended in divorce. Now he is married for the third time, and Marta remains single.

Marta allegedly denigrated him in front of others, calling him “boring, disgusting, stupid” and treated him more like a hated servant than a husband, who many believed was the mastermind behind Marta’s early publishing successes.

During one such verbal altercation, as I detail in my book, Marta claimed that she had slept with another man during a business trip to Los Angeles. Andy was shocked, but Marta dismissed the alleged tryst as “a one-time thing… unimportant… not interesting… just an experiment.”

But others in the Stewarts’ orbit, such as writer Jonathan Fast, the third husband of author Erica Jong, were aware of Martha’s fun activities – sometimes in the hot tub outside Fast’s bedroom.

“People were having fun naked,” Marta’s friend recalled about these meetings. The same type of perverse behavior occurred in the Stewart household.

Fast recalls that on one occasion at Turkey Hill, “Martha spent the entire evening flirting with a very handsome, successful married banker. The flirting was extremely blatant and aggressive. I felt left out because Marta didn’t flirt with me. She was very pretty, but always seemed very cold, manipulative and ruthless.

Erica, he added, “thought Marta was a bitch.”

While Martha recently boasted that she hid her affair from Andy for “30 years,” Erica Jong, Marta’s Barnard College friend, disagreed.

“I always heard that she contacted people and had many affairs,” Jong assured.

The Post has reached out to Marta’s representative for comment.

As she rose to the top, Marta became a stockbroker for a time and used her feminine wiles and “wonderful legs,” as one co-worker recalls, to generate business. She was attacked by married stockbroker and associate Brian Dennehy, who later became a popular actor.

They became close and felt, as Dennehy did, “a strong mutual attraction”; he also told me that he couldn’t take his eyes off her. “She was skinny, beautiful and incredibly sexy back then,” Dennehy said.

Although Dennehy claimed they never had an affair, he admitted, “I dreamed of getting involved with her.”

Andy allegedly suspected that his wife’s boss, Andy Monness of Monness, Williams & Sidel, also had “something” for Marta. Monness denied any affair and agreed to rave about her: “Martha was my dream girl. She had this magic.

At one point, Andy, tired of her teasing and flirting, allegedly had to confront one of Martha’s more ardent stalkers, millionaire Andrew J. Stein, who once unsuccessfully ran for mayor of New York. Stein told me he sent her flowers and took her for drinks at Raffles, a romantic private club at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel.

Stein called it “fun flirting,” and Martha was flattered by the remark. He thought she had “great looks and her response was friendly enough.”

But angry Andy finally made it happen. When Stein went too far in his appeals to Martha, he told meAndy finally called with a warning: “Stay the hell away from my wife!”

And Stein did it.

Later, as a divorcee in pursuit of Mr. Right, Martha pursued her old pal, stockbroker Dennehy, already a successful actor, apparently hoping for a relationship.

“I thought she fantasized about hooking up with him and showing Andy that she was still capable of living,” Stewart’s old friend Kathy Tatlock told me. “She said she always thought Dennehy was a very attractive guy.”

By accident, Marta met him in New York. He found her even more “alive” than ever and took her to the premiere and after-party.

“Having her on your arm isn’t such a bad thing,” Dennehy recalled.

But it was never anything more than that.

Why?

As Dennehy told me, “Martha is one of those women who scares the crap out of men.”