TEEN’S TALES OF DRUGS, SEX

SHE arrived in London an innocent 14-year-old thrilled to have landed a dream modelling job on the world’s top fashion magazine.

But shy Patience Bradley had no idea that she was about to be plunged into the capital’s wild 70s party scene of drugs and perverted sex.

And her joy at appearing in style bible Vogue quickly turned to shock at what she witnessed after work. “I was horrified and terrified by the experience,” she said.

The frightened teen saw small kids getting high at a party which had turned into a drugfuelled orgy. She witnessed a stripped Cabinet Minister being beaten bloody with whips and paddles in a kinky sex session.

Most distressing of all was the overdose death of a male model, also 14, at a party in her flat. Patience was a naive, horse-mad kid from Belfast when she was whisked off to London in 1976 to work for the posh magazine.

The budding model would rub shoulders with some of the 70s biggest superstars, such as actors Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Oliver Reed and Paul Newman as well as singers Mick Jagger and Alvin Stardust. Patience would end up dancing with Legs & Co on Top of the Pops and be seen by millions on Oxford Street billboards in a Miss Selfridge fashion campaign.

But life away from the photographer’s lens could be far from picture perfect as she discovered soon after arriving in London to share a flat with other Vogue models.

She said: “Within a week or so of my arrival, there was a party in our flat and a young male model, aged 14, the same age as myself, died of an overdose on the sofa in the living room surrounded by spaced-out strangers.

Orgy

“By the time they realised there was something wrong were too late. I have never tried any drugs as a result. Some teenage models in London behaved like children let loose in a sweet shop. “I was young and naive. I didn’t know what to expect. I spent a lot of time shocked and surprised in the early days.” Patience, now 55, reveals the seamy side of life as a top model in a tell-all book titled Where Do You Go To My Lovely – a nod to Peter Sarstedt’s hit of the same name about a poor girl joining the jet set. She said: “I’d go to all the parties, mainly because it was important to be seen in the right places by the right people. But often I was one of the few people there who was not off their heads. It was really awful at times.” She recalled at one party seeing a beautiful woman in her early 20s turn up with two small children aged about four or five. Patience said: “This party quickly disintegrated into a drug-fuelled orgy, with people having sex wherever and whenever they liked. The air was thick with marijuana smoke.” She sought out the children to look after them and found them staring out of a window. When she asked them what they were looking at they replied “a space ship”. She said: “They were both as high as kites due to the amount of drugged smoke in the air. I tried my best to persuade their mother to take them home but to no avail.” Another time Patience was verbally abused by volatile actor Reed. First he snapped at her for wearing a “dead rat” fur trim on her coat. Then when she tried to chat to him about horses, knowing he was a fellow horse-lover, he had a scary meltdown. He later apologised. She said: “He turned out to be delightful. He explained that earlier that day vandals had broken into his stables and a ttacked his horses with knives, seriously injuring one of them.” Many of Vogue’s posh readers would have been shocked if they