The real reason she never posed nude

The Raquel Welch with whom I became friends in LA was a fabled but faded drama queen, old enough to be my mother. I was an upstart nobody, young enough to be totally in awe. She was promoting a fitness video, and she called me ‘sweetheart’, ‘darling’, and, as if it were my name, ‘baby’. I’d heard vague bisexual rumours and had a fictitious boyfriend up my sleeve, just in case. ‘White girls are just so tightly wrapped sexually,’ she remarked through ravenous mouthfuls of chicken and rice cakes.

‘Hmm,’ I thought. ‘How does she know?’

It seemed a good time to ask why she’d never done topless or nude work.

‘Dark Latin nipples, baby,’ she shrugged. ‘Wanna see?’

I declined. It didn’t stop her talking about her sex life. She confessed to a penchant for copulation in cars, a habit acquired during her misspent San Diego youth.

She clutched her fingers together like a snake’s head and jabbed at me to emphasise a point. I was mesmerised and terrified. I legged it to the bathroom, past a stash of racy videos.

After that interview, we were inseparable for three months, before our friendship abruptly faded.

At the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel, or at Hamburger Hamlet on Sunset and Doheny, we’d bump into Raquel’s celebrity friends Carrie Fisher, Nancy Sinatra and Dean Martin.

Raquel, born Jo Raquel Tejada in September 1940, could talk for Bolivia, her native land.

She also constantly fished for compliments, and it was my job to provide them.

‘Baby, aren’t you going to tell me I look pretty today? Do I look sexy? C’mon, baby, a girl’s gotta know…’

She usually did, of course. But how on earth did she still look as fabulous as ever, 25 years on from her only memorable movie, One Million Years BC?

‘The secret, baby, is to start having “the work” before you actually need it!’

She then referred to herself unnervingly in the third person.

‘Raquel started getting things done back in the Sixties. All it’s taken is a tuck and tweak here and there ever since. By the time you really do need it, you’re ahead of the game.’

Tumbling Dice by Lesley-Ann Jones is available to order at amazon.co.uk