'I don't wish I had a man'

Lizzy has been earning her living as a model since she was 16 and is now a veteran of the gossip pages - "though it's not my favourite part of the job", she confesses. Periodically, when she makes it into print, it's as the butt of some minor scandal, which is almost always fictitious.

The latest brouhaha comes over racy photographs published yesterday of her passionate encounter at Kabaret's Prophecy in Soho with Calum Best, the son of George and Angie. They first met modelling for a Monsoon campaign. Normally she tends to go for steadier types like Sean Lennon, whom she was dating until last summer. But she is emphatic about staying single for a while. "It's good to learn how to be independent when you're young," she says.

The start of her career was dogged by reports that Mick Jagger was " furious" about his daughter's modelling ambitions, an accusation Lizzy doesn't deny, pointing out it was "blown out of all proportion. I was modelling at weekends; it wasn't interfering with my schoolwork."

Most recently, unflatteringly gaunt catwalk shots sparked a controversy about whether she is too thin. Lancôme was said to be unhappy with the image she was projecting and lining up possible replacements. In the flesh, she looks slim but perfectly healthy. "Nobody told me to put weight on," she says. "That was completely made up. I haven't gained or lost weight since I was 17." The benefits of her genetic inheritance stretch as far as her metabolism, it would seem - she has to eat five meals a day in order not to lose weight.

"The trick is to eat lots of protein and fatty foods. My dad and my brother James both exercise like crazy. I can't be bothered, I'd rather watch television."

SALADS, she says, make her "go green and pass out. On modelling jobs, they are always giving me salad for lunch, and I say, 'I'll be asleep in an hour if you give me that.' I have to send out for a burger instead. As a family we have really unhealthy low body fat counts. Perhaps that's why the papers said I was too thin," she goes on, laughing heartily.

She remains close to both her parents. She takes her mother's advice on her career - "though the business has changed so much since she was in it," she says. "She'll say things like, 'Have you got your make-up kit?' because in her day the models would do their own make-up."

Lizzy is the eldest of Mick and Jerry's four children - James, 19, is at Rada and has also worked as a model, while the younger two, Georgia, 13, and Gabriel, seven, live with their mother in Richmond.

Delve into her childhood and she backs off, wrapping her pipecleaner arms about her, but it seems to have been a schizophrenic combination of world tours and private tutors followed by periods of bucolic calm in Surrey. She was sent to Ibstock Place in Roehampton, but found it "a bit floaty ... I'm really interested in history and English".

At 16, having taken her GCSEs, she left school in the teeth of parental disapproval and moved to New York to start modelling. Since the single regret of Jerry Hall's life is her failure to attend university, you wonder if Lizzy regretted abandoning her education. "No, not really," she says, flashing her mother's toothy smile. "I've learned more about life than my friends did being at school. I've met more interesting people and I feel more grown-up. They're all still at university; I'm the only one who's gone out into the world."

Still, she plans to take an Open University degree in English and history. "It would be fun," she says blithely. "I think I'll get more out of it at this stage. When you're young, you want to figure out what life's about, not sit in a classroom." Only once did her inexperience show, during a shoot with the photographer Ellen von Unwerth, who shot her in semi-sheer bra and pants - pictures that made headlines, to the alleged fury of Mick.

"Mmmm," says Lizzy thoughtfully. "Ellen von Unwerth was very naughty. She took pictures of me getting changed and I was like, don't do that! But she did, and she sold them."

A burst of laughter succeeds her slow-burning indignation. "There was nothing I could do. But I've learned from that mistake. I always get photographers to sign something to say they won't sell the pictures on. I'll never work with her again."

After a year in a Greenwich Village apartment, Lizzy began to prefer the attractions of London. "I felt I'd got all I could out of New York. Everyone's far too busy for their own good."

Still, it took her three years to decide to sell her apartment and move back to Richmond. She now lives alone in her own two-bedroom cottage a rolling stone's throw from the parental mansion, following the break-up of her relationship with Lennon. "We only went out briefly," she says. "It wasn't really serious." Since then, she insists she has been "single and happy ... I don't get lonely, I haven't found myself saying, 'I wish I had a boyfriend.'" Are potential mates daunted by the rock-star baggage that is her birthright? "Maybe," she admits. "But I don't go out with anyone unless I get to know them for a long time first."

She's an enthusiastic homebody; she has just discovered a miniature Aga "in dark country green", and enjoys cooking hearty English roasts. "Not very rock 'n' roll, I know."

She is working on her first book, which sounds more interesting than the vanity projects of models who want to be taken seriously. It is a history of the iconic Sixties shop Granny Takes a Trip (source of

Meet the parents: Mick, Jerry and baby Lizzy

Jimi Hendrix's frilly shirts and several items in Mick's wardrobe, too), which she's writing with Adam Weymouth, son of Nigel Weymouth, the shop's co-owner.

Her eyes light up as she talks about it. It's clearly a more congenial pastime for her than modelling, which is no longer an ambition. "I feel as though I've succeeded with modelling," she says simply.

She is auditioning for acting roles, and regularly attends classes in New York, "but my real ambition is to be an eccentric artist living in the countryside," she confesses. "I love painting and riding. Once I get my cottage in Richmond all nice, I'll start thinking about getting a little cottage in the country as well."

The exterior is a lot more polished but, underneath, Lizzy Jagger doesn't seem to have changed much from the reluctant supermodel she was as a schoolgirl.

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