You men are very easy to control. Put on some lovely stockings then

EXCLUSIVE By COLIN WILLS (inside leg 31ins) keeping her compa

IT'S a terrible thing to have to confess, but up to now I have never really been riveted by the technicalities of stocking manufacture.

Like most men I enjoy the finished product on a shapely leg, but the ins and outs of nylon, rayon, needles and looms...forget it.

The funny thing is though, when Jerry Hall starts explaining it to you the whole thing becomes endlessly fascinating.

"Yuh know, Carlin," she says in her breathy Texas drawl, "mah new stacking range actually has some of the technology NASA used in the missions to space. Kin you buh-lieve that?"

Sitting next to her on a sofa I find myself believing almost everything. This has probably less to do with science than the fact that she is herself wearing a pair of her very sheerest creations. I fumble through my Charnos brochure and see that they come from her "sexy boudoir range - for a truly indulgent experience".

I should be so lucky. "These are my secret weapon in the stocking war," Ms Hall announces, uncurling her 56-inch legs from under her and stretching them out.

They seem to go on and on for ever, like one of those Texas highways that shimmer into the distance as far as the eye can see. As she swivels I discover they have a seam at the back, like the line running down the middle of a road. Jerry and stockings go back a long way.

I remember her saying once that the last thing she did when she was sleeping with someone she loved was to clip on her suspender belt before going to bed.

She laughs when I remind her of this. "Oh, I don't do that any more," she says. "Well, maybe sometimes. It's one of the nicest things a woman can do for a man.

"But mostly I wear hold-ups now. The problem with suspenders is that they show when you're wearing a clingy dress. But these new hold- ups of mine leave no indentations or unsightly marks."

I make an entry in my notebook: "NO indentations. NO unsightly marks." It takes my thoughts away from Jerry's legs for a second or two. But not for long.

I tell her I'm sorry to hear that she's veering away from suspenders - men after all have a huge yen for them, in the same way little girls yearn for ponies.

It's in the genes, I add. "You men are very easy to control," she laughs. "Put on some lovely stockings, strap on a suspender belt and you're toilet-trained.

"But you guys can have some fun with hold-ups too. I like the way you have the lace at the top of them and your skirt rides up just a li'l bit and you can see the lace.

"My stockings are a great present for a guy to buy a girl," she adds. "Because they are good quality. They are not that, y'know, nasty material."

She gives a little shudder, doubtless remembering those Christmases and Valentine's Days when she eagerly unwrapped her boyfriends' parcels only to discover a shower of cheap tat.

"I've had some really terrible stuff bought for me. The worst was a nurse's outfit. Ghastly."

Hey, well, hang on, I tell her. Maybe he was just trying to encourage you into starting a new career in medicine. Heart transplantation perhaps. Or bypass surgery. "Uh-oh," she says, shaking her head. "It was just some fantasy thing. I don't blame anyone for that and I'd have gone along with it, but the material was so awful that I never actually put it on."

I was going to tell her that she is probably the only 48-year-old I could ever imagine in a nurse's outfit, but I don't get the chance because she is rattling along like a Texas wagon train talking about men and seduction.

She's a tall woman, pushing 6ft, and I wondered if this has been a deterrent for some men. Has she ever been out with a really small guy? "Oh sure," she says. "I mean I'm not ageist...or heightist. If I like someone that's all that counts."

Since her divorce from Mick Jagger, Jerry has been pretty much single, but you do get a distinct impression about her and men...or rather two distinct impressions.

One, that she would really like to fall in love, properly and forever, and two, that if it doesn't happen she would be perfectly happy inside her own skin. Her priority now is looking after her and Mick's four children - Elizabeth, 20, James, 18, Georgia, 12, and Gabriel, six.

However there must be an undercurrent of disappointment, however skilfully she hides it.

"I'm a one-man woman," she once said. "I don't want complications or intrigues.

"I don't think I've ever had that kind of relationship. But I don't feel in any kind of hurry. If it happens it happens."

Suddenly, during our talk she comes out with a revelation. "I'm dating," she says. She uses the word like a schoolgirl - I swear I almost saw an eyelash flutter.

"Like, you know, occasionally. I mean I'm single still, I'm not going steady or engaged or planning to get married or anything like that."

Would she like to get married again? She shakes her head. "Nah. Why bother? I mean, I was with someone for 23 years and had four children. And now, well, I'm financially independent and I have a fabulous career. So I'm not particularly interested in getting married at the moment.

"Anyhow, love is something special, isn't it? Something that happens to you now and then, but not that often. I think love is a wonderful thing. I still believe in it.

"I loved my husband. I wouldn't have stayed with him 23 years and had four children if I hadn't have loved him."

Whoever it is she is "dating" is a lucky man. Jerry would make a fabulous girlfriend, not least because she has a joy about her, a rare ability to throw back her head, shake her blonde tresses and roar with laughter.

It's all the more amazing, this appetite for fun, because she had what by any standards constitutes a difficult start in life. One of five daughters, Jerry left her Texan home as a teenager to make it in the world on her own. She was just 16 when she started modelling in Paris.

Yet she can still reach out to other people and give them comfort when they need it.

In fact, one reason why I am in this West End hotel suite with the highly glamorous Ms Hall is not just to admire her stockings (which I would quite happily do until, say, the year 2015) but to watch her host a fashion show.

It's a fashion show with a difference, because it's in aid of the charity Breast Cancer Care, and every one of the models parading on the catwalk has undergone surgery for the disease.

Jerry has a special reason to be here, because her twin sister Terry fell victim to breast cancer and, when it happened, Jerry was there for her.

She put her career on ice and flew back home. "Terry was frightened," she told her audience at the show. "Frightened and panicking."

Back in the room she revealed just how terrible a time it was. "We were close, closer than you can imagine. We slept in the same bed until we were 16.

"I went and stayed there for two months,ny while she was having her mastectomy and then chemo-therapy and radiation treat- ment.

"All she could think about was, that she was going to die. It was awful. So I tried to keep her mood up and distract her as much as I could. It was a difficult, difficult time."

Terry's been cancer-free now for six years. Her kids are both in university - she's doing fine. Now she talks to other people about breast cancer, helping them through it in her own right.

"It's like those people on the catwalk. They were so pleased to be up there doing something, not feeling like victims, you know, helpless."

I've always thought it's the little things that tell you most about a person, the way that they behave when they don't think they are being observed.

So I watched Jerry when she stepped off the floodlit podium where she was doing the introductions and sat at a little table in the darkness.

She never once took her eyes off the catwalk, and everyone who came on stage was met by her with a wolf-whistle, a Thumbs Up sign or a Texas war-whoop.

I never thought I'd ever be moved at a fashion show - but these were all people who had made what Jerry calls "the journey" of cancer and had come through it.

It gives her pleasure that a proportion of the price of her stocking range will go to breast cancer relief. But above all she hopes that they will provide a lot of glamour and also sexy pleasure.

"I knew the power of stockings to attract ever since I went to Paris as a teenager.

"Veronica Lake was my idol then and I wanted to copy her...you know, her stockings, red lipstick.

"I remember guys giving me compliments on my stockings from, I guess, as young as 14.

"They used to look at my legs in them and say, 'Wow'.

"You gat the message, Carlin?" she says as we exchange goodbyes.

"Nudity can be really boring, specially when it comes to legs. I mean, come ahn, stackings are always sexier than bare legs. Everyone knows that."

Yes, Jerry, I tell her. I think I catch your drift.

-The Jerry Hall Collection of hosiery is available from leading department stores. Call 0800 032 7000 for your nearest stockist

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