Why Brit men are the best

Some girls have all the luck: beauty, brains and a bulging bank account. Vanessa Neumann has all three in shedloads - movie-star good looks, a soon-to-be finished PhD from New York's prestigious Columbia University and the odd hundred million pounds at least.

It's no surprise that the 30-year-old Venezuelan is known as the Cracker from Caracas.

So why, this Gucci-clad goddess wants to know, are the British solely obsessed with her "liaison" with Mick Jagger? She even claims that a female magazine writer last year tried to bribe her to spill the beans with the offer of a 10-page piece in Vogue and a shoot by Mario Testino. "If it had been Helmut Newton, I might have been tempted," she laughs.

But only last month she was reported as saying, "Mick only has one girl and that is me; there are no others." She went on to say his fling with Sophie Dahl was long over, and that she still sees Jagger a couple of times a week. She was even said to admit that Jagger "is amazing in bed".

When I politely imply that this isn't the best way to kill a story, she wrinkles her aristocratic nose. "Don't believe everything you read," she harrumphs. So, it's not true? She hesitates. "We'll always be friends."

Last year it was very different. Then she happily referred to Jagger as "my other half". Now she says much of it is nonsense, but doesn't take the opportunity to set the record straight. Last time I met Neumann she was full of stories of going on tour with the Stones, now she doesn't think it is "polite" to ask about that.

Their affair is said to have started at a Christmas party in New York in 1998, although she has known Jagger since she was four years old, thanks to childhood holidays spent in Mustique, where they are still neighbours. There, Neumann is very much Queen Bee. Colin Tennant, the eccentric British aristocrat,

Mick Jagger: the Stone had a fling with Neumann

sold the Caribbean millionaire's playground to her grandfather in the mid-1970s, and the family still owns a big chunk of the island's management company.

Her grandfather was a Czech of Jewish descent who survived the Nazis only to flee from the Soviets to Caracas, where he became a leading industrialist. The Neumanns are considered to be Venezuelan aristocracy. "We have a street, even a university, named after us. The President went to my father's funeral and there was a police escort at my parents' wedding."

It seems Neumann wants to be famous in her own right, but for what? On the one hand, she enjoys her Cracker from Caracas reputation. "I guess it's flattering," she admits. "It's amusing to see how people think you are. I think men are attracted by the reputation. I used to want people to see the real me but now I think, 'sod it'." In the next breath, she talks about how she wants to be famous for her writing, "like Simone de Beauvoir", but it's hard to imagine that de Beauvoir would have had her 30th birthday party featured in the pages of Tatler.

Thanks to her childhood holidays she has all the right connections. "I found London easy to break into because of Mustique. I grew up with Brits. I first went to Mustique when I was four, when it was empty and very English. Mick was there with Bianca, along with the likes of the Channons, the Tennants and Princess Margaret. It was a bunch of blue bloods on the beach. At the time there were no telephones on the island, Princess Margaret had invited my grandfather for dinner and he had to cancel when a business thing came up. He sent his pilot in the private jet from Caracas to deliver a handwritten note of apology. She thought that was great fun."

Neumann first came to London in 1998 to visit friends. "I had so much fun I decided to buy a flat here. When I started writing my dissertation I moved here, although my horse, dog and car are still in New York." But despite her vast wealth, you don't get the impression that money has brought her great happiness. "I've got enough to live on," she admits. "It is a tremendous luxury, the freedom to say that when I'm not happy somewhere, I can get on a plane and live wherever I want. But it is also confusing. You don't have to do anything, so what do you do? You have a plethora of choice, and choice often confuses the issue."

Neumann has more choices in life than most. She can even choose between a number of nationalities. After her parents' divorce, her American mother took her to the US, and she only visited Caracas for holidays. "But I feel Venezuelan and Spanish is my mother tongue. I have spent so much time abroad I don't think I could move back to Caracas and live there. There you have to play by the rules."

Even though she doesn't play by the rules, Neumann still wants to be treated like a lady. "On dates, I'll offer to pay for the tab," she explains, "but I would much prefer it if he picked it up. It's like, 'Please say no'." That's why she loves English men - although Jagger is notoriously stingy. "They are bon vivants, like Latin Americans, but also old school and know how to treat a woman. They are like Crackerjacks." When I look confused she explains that these are caramel-covered popcorn she ate as a child in New York. "There is always a toy inside the box and that's the real thrill. English men are not nearly as dispassionate as they seem - get them behind closed doors, then you'll see. That's the toy in the Crackerjack box."

Jagger isn't the only Brit to have melted Neumann's heart. When she was 18, she fell for David Bowie. "He invited me to one of his parties on Mustique," she explains. "He came over to introduce himself and to compliment me on my dress. He really didn't have to, but I was bowled over by his manners."

Guy Ritchie, whom she met through mutual friend Piers Adam, also epitomises the Brit quality she finds so attractive. As does man-about-town Tim Jefferies. "I've yet to meet Robbie Williams," but, she says, "I love the fact he doesn't take himself too seriously. He comes over as a gentleman - but then with that face and body, what woman would say no?" And she's a sucker for chaps with floppy hair. "It was exactly the look of the first Englishman I dated - an art dealer I met in New York five years ago," she says. No surprise, then, that Hugh Grant has caught her eye at parties. "And if the rumours are true, then he really is the surprise in the Crackerjack box," she laughs. "And not that shy at all."

Although Englishmen may be gentlemen, they don't always prize brains as highly as Neumann might like. "A PhD is so much hard work - you would only do it if you loved it. But people in London think I don't take it seriously - they seem to think that if you go out at night you can't be writing during the day." But just as you're wondering if she wants to be loved for her mind, not her body, she starts to rub a dry patch on her elbow. "I'm usually very well moisturised," she says with irritation.

It sums up the contradiction that is Vanessa Neumann, the intellectual who wants to be a man-eater. Perhaps that is why she can't quite draw a line under the Jagger affair. After all, she wants to be famous and that's why she is, in London at least. You can't help but feel there is a tiny part of this intelligent, beautiful woman frightened that if people are no longer interested in the affair then they will no longer be interested in her. Or perhaps there is another reason, and that is if she is to have a relationship with Jagger then she has to play her cards close to her chest. Could it be that the woman who has everything wants what we all want? Love.