Sex, drugs and Sheffield steel: Sixties model Victoria Nixon reveals all

Ms Nixon is about to write her autobiography, called Headshot - Beyond The Glitz - about what it was really like during the sex, drugs and rock and roll era of the Swinging Sixties in London.


AUDIO: Listen to Victoria Nixon's interview.

Ms Nixon was famously photographed in the steel dress for a national newspapers advert, promoting new innovative uses for steel back in the late 1960s, with the headline British Steel shaped to the customers' requirements.

At 67, the still elegant and stunningly beautiful ex-model wants to remind folk the steel industry is worth fighting for.


She is passionate about steel and coal not least of all because she was forged in the industrial heartland of South Yorkshire itself.


The Barnsley lass is promising a 'warts and all' biography about her life, which had amazing highs but terrible personal tragedies - it will including how she dealt with the suicides of her father and brother, which shaped her own destiny.

Manfred Mann rock star Paul Jones first spotted her model potential when he saw her in the crowd at Peter Springfellow's Mojo Club in Sheffield.


A couple of years later she was officially discovered by the late great fashion photographer Helmut Newton, then went on to be photographed for Vogue and other top fashion magazines in Paris, Milan, New York - all over the world.


Hailed by the Daily Mail as "the new face of '68", she rubbed shoulders with all the stars of the day, had dinner with legendary surrealist painter Salvador Dali, was the first Top Of The Pops promo model and even had the Beach Boys sing at her 21st birthday party.


She went on to be super successful in seven different careers – as a model, advertising copywriter, magazine editor, television producer, working with the likes of Sylvester Stallone and Richard Harris, became a deli owner and has already written two best sellers, giving model tips.


Her latest role - she says also her most rewarding - is as company director of AirCell Structures, with third husband Michael Messenger, 68, designing and manufacturing flat pack shelter and other humanitarian products, used by aid agencies in disaster areas around the globe.


Headshot, the working title of her forthcoming biography, will be her insider’s take on the bizarre world of international modelling during its most radical era; a honest and frank insight into what has become a stereotypical world of Minis, mini skirts, The Beatles and Twiggy.


Ms Nixon is promising to reveal what it was really like, capturing the extraordinary social and counter culture changes that took place in the late Sixties and juxtaposing the glamour and decadence with her own story, including three marriages, profound loss and the self destruction of family and friends.


So was it really the swinging sixties in London - sex, drugs and rock and roll?


"It was. It really was, to a degree that it shouldn't have been, to be honest with you," says Ms Nixon.


"At the time you live life and you think 'wow, this is great', every young person does that. But I do look back on that period and think our dear dads fought wars for us and all we were doing was being hell bent on getting high on drugs, sex and rock and roll.


"But I'm writing it because I'm fed up with people constantly thinking that we late-Sixties models were sort of vacuous hair flickers. We weren't, it's a complete misunderstanding.


"I wasn't part of the Jerry Hall era, I was a generation before, but after Jean Shrimpton.


"So we didn't get that thing, like Twiggy did with her manager by her side, we were completely independent, quite courageous girls who travelled the world, just to see what was out there.


"It was a fantastic thing to do, to see the world with a paid-for smile."


She wrote her two previous books, Supermodels' Beauty Secrets and Supermodels' Diet Secrets, to dispel reports about over thin models.


"Believe me, successful ones, with staying power, could not do this job long term with no food or food problems," she says.


"It just isn't true and I wanted to say that.


"I’ve been very pragmatic about food. Barnsley girls are. If you want a treat, what most successful models is eat healthily 80% of the time. Then if you want a fantastic night out you can eat and drink whatever you want. It’s a terrible thing to deprive yourself. What's the point of being thin if you have an unhappy life. We all want to have a good time.


I also wanted to ravage this myth that you need to spend a fortune to look good.


"The point about modelling is that you can’t decide to be a model. Somebody else tells them they should be one.


"The big things in life come in quiet, ordinary moments when we re not looking for them or expecting them. Life is all that counts in the end."


Her next outing in print, her biography, will be very different to her previous books, but possibly even more compelling, with all the possibilities of a TV or big screen spin-off..


"It will be a very open biography, not ghosted and completely honest. I want it to be a lessons learned, inspirational book - especially aimed at young people who are quite confused by all this palava. It will be warts an all. I won't hold back. It will disclose everything that was good and bad about the era and my life. I'm hoping to have the book out later this year."


She is also hoping somebody will help her find the steel dress she wore in that 1969 ad for British Steel.


"The ad appeared in the Sunday Times and the Economist and so on. It's very poignant now, obviously. The headline was British Steel shaped to the customers requirements. I was wearing a steel dress that was specially made for me in Sheffield. I would love to have it now but I don't know what happened to it.


"I feel very strongly about what is happening with steel at the moment. We export 10 million tons of scrap and we consume 10 million tons of processed steel. It doesn't make sense when scrap can be recycled. We just need somebody to realise that it's not a question of A or B, you shut them down or put in billions of English pounds that could be used elsewhere. This has to be thought out very carefully and I hope this Government can do it."