Lord Lichfield: the night I nearly died

Lord Lichfield takes me on a celebrity sightseeing tour of Mustique - except, of course, I can't see any celebrities, only the entrances to their driveways.

All I can see of Mick Jagger's house is his peach-painted staff quarters, his large wooden front door and bamboo walls. The fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger lives next door - a huge white palace on the beach. "It's hideous, isn't it?" says Lichfield. "Bryan Adams's house," he says, pointing to a driveway, "over there, Shania Twain."

He had picked me up at Mustique's "airport", in reality a bamboo hut, in his 4x4 and taken me on a leisurely drive around this Caribbean island the size of Hyde Park.

Patrick Lichfield features in a BBC programme, What I Wished I'd Known When I Was 20, next week. "I wish I'd known to buy more land in Mustique then," he says, back at his own island hideaway, a place he bought in 1966 for "thousands" - and now, of course, worth millions.

You can just about see Princess Margaret's house from his terrace. The late princess was probably Mustique's most famous islander.

"When she first came, it was very primitive. We had no electricity and we'd cook on little camping stoves. Princess Margaret was completely unfazed. We were bitten to death by mosquitos and it took nearly an hour to get from one end of the island to another because the roads were terrible. It's become comfortable but there's still an island feel about it.

"The celebrity thing here is absolutely meaningless. A few years before she died, Princess Margaret held a dinner party at the Beach Bar and she asked me, Raquel [Welch], Mick and Jerry, David [Bowie] and Iman. Nobody turned their head."

Is there a property one-upmanship on the island? "Not at all," says Lichfield. "There are people here who could afford much grander houses but they don't need to show off."

He shows me where he had a near-fatal accident 13 years ago. He fell 18 feet backwards over a wall by his swimming pool and smashed his skull in two places, punctured a lung, broke his back and eight ribs.

No planes could land on the island at night, so he had to lie on the tiled floor of his living room for nine hours, waiting for dawn with only an aspirin for the pain. He spent six weeks in hospital and another eight months recovering.

"If you have a near-death experience like that, you realise how fragile life is. I am hugely grateful for the hand life has dealt me. There have been bitter moments but if they hadn't happened, I wouldn't relish the sweet bits."

After the accident, he gave up his 50-a-day cigarette habit and all but stopped drinking. "And now they've got lights on the runway at the airport."

Lichfield, second cousin to the Queen, insists there's no resentment among the locals ("we're good for the economy") but there's something disarming, to me at least, about the super-rich white settlers and their servants.

"Stella!" he shouts. We're sitting in his beautiful living room, with whitewashed wooden walls decorated with turtle shells. The room opens onto his terrace with a stunning view of the sea. The house - painted white and very pretty - is sprawling; tiers of lower bedrooms, terraces, orchards and two cottages tumble down the hillside.

He thinks it's small (though with six bedrooms, a gym, and a cinema being built, it's hardly pokey) and he rents it out for 30 weeks a year at £8,000 a week. Hugh Grant has taken it, as has Pierce Brosnan.

Stella, one of his staff - he has six - comes in. "My Lord?" she says. He asks for more of the zingy lime juice we've been drinking. "Yes, my Lord." When Lichfield refers to his companion of 10 years, Lady Annunziata Asquith, daughter of the Earl of Oxford, to the staff, he says "Her Ladyship".

He is slightly built and at 65, his silver bouffant hair is still providing a crucial few extra inches - Lichfield is not tall. He's barefoot and has the smallest feet I've seen on a man. And, with the exception of the tattoo of a seahorse on his right forearm (he wanted to photograph a tattooist who refused unless Lichfield had it done), he seems surprisingly traditional.

Perhaps it's age. This is the man who, in his youth, became one of the world's most famous photographers, shooting naked beauties for mechanics' calendars, hanging out with the most glamorous models and rock stars of the Sixties and Seventies and leading a wild life.

It certainly wasn't what his parents, Viscount Anson and Princess Anne of Denmark, had in mind for him. He was brought up at the family home, Shugborough, near Stafford (now a National Trust property but he still has a 35-room "apartment" there). His interest in photography developed just before he was packed off to prep school at the age of seven when his mother gave him a camera.

After prep school it was Harrow, then Sandhurst and the Grenadier Guards. He loved Army life but photography was his passion.

He became a photographer on 14 October, 1962 at 2.30pm - the exact moment he left the Army. His parents, by then separated, were so horrified when he got a job as a photographer's assistant in London, they cut off his allowance.

"I slept on a camp bed in my boss's studio." He didn't use his title at first "because I didn't want to be seen to get jobs because of who I am and any connections I had with the Royal Family. But when I cut my teeth, I decided to come clean".

His connections have certainly come in useful: - he has photographed the Queen and Prince Philip, the Duke and Duchess of Kent ("I forgot the film - I had to rush out to a chemist and buy their entire stock") and was the photographer at Charles and Diana's wedding.

In his 40-year career he has photographed some of the world's most beautiful women, including Shakira Caine, Jerry Hall and Elle MacPherson. Does he ever get bored of pretty girls? He looks at me as if I'm mad. Or difficult supermodels? "Some models have thrown tantrums and been quite vile but I'm not naming names." Lichfield never names names, unless he approves ("Joanna Lumley - a true and enduring beauty").

Women, drinking and drugs ("just the occasional foray into something to smoke") were all part of his lifestyle. He even enjoyed fighting in pubs. "I could start a fight over anything," he confesses. "I liked a fight. I boxed in the Army." He was bullied at school so this could explain his penchant for scuffles in later life.

He moved in the hippest London circles - at Mick Jagger's wedding to Bianca, he gave the bride away - and was constantly surrounded by beautiful women.

"I never saw girls when I was at school and suddenly there was this explosion of girls to chat up. There were a few romances but they weren't all models, there were actresses too - Britt Ekland for a while and Jane Seymour."

How many girlfriends did he have? "Too many to remember. I was very self-centred and had little thought for other people. It got too good too quickly. I had a disposable income way above what I could have expected had my parents supported me. I was pretty unpleasant."

One casualty of his jet-set life was his marriage to Lady Leonora Grosvenor. They married in 1975, had three children (Rose, now 27, Thomas, 25, and Eloise, 24) but divorced after 11 years, amid reports of his affair with a model.

"To marry a photographer who charges around the world with the most beautiful girls is not a reliable prospect," he said. "Until my marriage break-up, I'd never had any form of emotional upset. I might have broken a few hearts but my own was pretty much intact. That shows how spoilt I was.

"Then, when the bump came, boy did it hurt, probably because I recognised that it was my fault. I was the one who had strayed."

After the divorce, Lichfield was so depressed he "forgot to eat", sparking reports that he was suffering from Aids because he became so thin. Now, he says, he is very happy in his relationship with Lady Annunziata Asquith.

She is wandering around in a lilac dress with "Mustique" embroidered on the front, her blonde hair scooped up at her neck. In her fifties, she is still incredibly attractive.

She is the most beautiful woman he has photographed, says Lichfield. But doesn't he have to say that? "No, it's true," he says. They have known each other for many years (she modelled for him for 17 years).

"I've never been one for relationships with much younger women. I have more in common-with someone of my own generation." Would he like to get married again? "I'm very happy as I am," is all he will say. "I've become content in the past couple of years. I stopped complaining."

Then I ask the hardest question of all: may I take his photograph? It should have been completely unnerving - the people in my pictures always have their heads cut off and I don't even know how to work the flash. I hand the camera to him and to his increasing annoyance, he can't seem to work it out either. "How embarrassing," he says.

After 10 minutes of punching buttons, Lichfield finally gets it going, poses and tries to direct me into position to take the picture. I wonder if asking him to "say cheese" would be the wrong thing to do, but he's already smiling smugly, a picture postcard of paradise laid out behind him. How could he really ever have had anything to complain about?