Her teatime outfit might have been formal, but Mae West's conversation was anything but. Within minutes of my arriving at her Hollywood penthouse one afternoon in 1974, she was lugging her exercise bicycle out of the dining room to prove her daily fitness routine: never mind that she was 83 and the bicycle was covered in a thick film of dust.

But she did look amazing. Fitted pink trouser suit, teetering platform heels, towering platinum-blonde hairpiece and false eyelashes that could have inflicted paper cuts. She'd swept through the double doors of her drawing room after being announced by her live-in lover at the time, Paul Novak – a former Mr California 30 years her junior.

"I have an extra thyroid gland," she announced airily. "It gives me twice the energy and twice, the, you know, everything else I guess."

I studied a nude portrait and several nude sculptures of Ms West while I digested this information.

Tea came in a silver service on a tray and was served by Novak: English tea and shop-bought shortbread, which I hogged much more of than she did. Although West was known for her curves, I got the impression she wasn't much interested in food, and certainly not in cooking it, although she talked at length about the benefits of putting coconut oil on her face.

When it was time to go I signed her visitors' book, which seemed all the wrong way round. Her parting shot was to give a thumbs-up to the women's movement – "I'm a liberated woman, I did everything I wanted. And I never wanted children. They'd have taken my mind off myself."

We shook hands and I staggered off. Dazed.