Arnold made a point of always wearing her Norland Nanny uniform when she worked at the Jaggers. “They felt like a normal family and I felt part of it,” she tells the Telegraph also recalling a time when she and Mick made Christmas dinner together. ‘That was lovely!’ she remembers.
After leaving Jade, the nanny of five months, and returning from a trip to Asia, Jagger’s driver called Arnold to tell him about a job as a Rolling Stones tour manager. Bel Air mansions, luxury hotels, private jets, extravagant gifts and famous presentations all came with the role, but as Arnold says, so did instability. “As soon as a fire was extinguished, another broke out,” she recalls.
But Arnold was no stranger to good times and while managing the band’s schedule, she also came to enjoy their party lifestyle. She told the Telegraph: ‘It was about sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. I wasn’t a saint either! Let’s put it this way. I took drinks and cocaine after a show but I stayed in control so I could pull myself together if something went wrong.” She remembers being “such a close-knit family on tour” and the “bear hugs” she received from the band.
However, not all of them were fun and glamorous nights out for Arnold. In 1977, she lost her fiancé Dean in a plane crash, a trip he had previously advised her against.
Now retired, Arnold lives in Devon, although she enjoys visiting London to see old friends, including former model and George Harrison’s girlfriend, Patti Boyd. Arnold spends her days painting, walking and participating in “long chatty lunches” although she does not drink due to alcohol-induced migraines, “maybe I overloaded in the day… “, she says.
