If you've ever watched the movie One Million Years BC (you know, the one starring Raquel Welch in a fur bikini) you will have seen lots of footage of my big brother Tim's former girlfriend Michaela.

For it was she that did lots of the stunt work for Raquel, as well as playing the part First Shell Girl.

She did the bit where Raquel was carried away by the pterodactyl and many of the shots where she had to run, climb, or do anything that may have ruffled her expensive Hollywood stunningness.

She also did the wrestling scene, where two cave girls have a bit of a ruck!

Michaela (or Micky as we knew her) was the niece of my mum's old school friend Violet, and as our families used to meet up regularly and Tim and she were roughly the same age, it wasn't all that surprising that they struck up a relationship.

Occasionally she came to stay at our farm.

She was great fun to have around and would impress the whole family by vaulting onto our ponies and riding them bareback.

She even taught my older sisters to do some good tricks on them.

She was very beautiful and had already started a career as a successful model.

In fact she often arrived carrying a bag stuffed full of strange and intriguing things: make-up, false eyelashes, wigs, exotic hair clips and high-heeled shoes.

I remember giggling a lot as she changed her hair from blonde to brown to black.

The relationship fizzled out when my brother won a scholarship to an American university, but it was easy to keep up with Micky's career as she popped up in TV advertisements, in magazines and various films.

On our old black and white TV we saw her doing her cowgirl bit in a famous petrol ad and driving a flash sports car for Mercedes.

She was photographed by David Bailey for magazines like Vogue and at the cinema we saw her in the Beatles film A Hard Day's Night, and later in One Million Years BC.

As Micky enjoyed her alloted 15 minutes of super-glamourous fame, friends couldn't believe that my brother had let such a gorgeous creature get away just because of a university place. However, I'm certain he made the right decision.

He embarked on a life in academia and is now a world expert on energy sharing and the feasibility of a bewildering variety of electricity grids.

He's a 67-year-old professor who has quite literally never left school.

Forty years ago he married a lovely American who, while not a bareback rider or a fashion model, was, and still is, far more suited to be the wife of a research scholar.

Frankly, my brother needs to be looked after and nurtured at home, and not worrying about his missus galavanting about in a fur bikini.