By John Nurden

One time teen-idol turned actor and musical theatre star Jess Conrad has shared his stage secrets including how he auditioned, unsuccessfully, for the part of James Bond.

Now 87, the movie star and singer of the infamous My Pullover song revealed in a two-hour intimate chat at Sheppey’s Criterion Theatre on Saturday that he auditioned for the role of 007 in 1969 in a bid to take over from Sean Connery.

He had made up his mind that successful male actors all had blue eyes like Paul Newman so he invested in a pair of £100 blue contact lenses.

He recalled to the audience: “I ran up the stairs to the audition room and knocked on the door. But while I waited to be called in I suddenly realised I had forgotten to put my ‘eyes’ in.

“As producer Cubby Broccoli called ‘come in’ I was struggling to put my lenses in and dropped one on the carpet. I picked it up and put it in but I also put a hair from the floor into my eye at the same time.

“I couldn’t see a thing but walked in and announced ‘My names Conrad, Jess Conrad in my best Bond voice. I then heard a voice sigh and say: ‘I’m over here!’”

Desperate to retreat, the temporarily visually impaired would-be spy made his excuses and backed himself into a broom cupboard.

Needless to say, the role went to another. George Lazenby took the part of the sophisticated agent with a licence to kill in On Her Majesty’s Service.

“It was most unfortunate,” admitted a rueful Jess who went on to work with Robin Askwith on the raunchy indie flick Cool It, Carol.

Within a couple of years Jess, who is a patron of the 100-seat theatre in Blue Town, had taken over the role of Jesus from David Essex in the musical Godspell and went on to star in Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

Guest appearances followed in Gerry Anderson’s Space 1999, the TV comedy series Are You Being Served, Crossroads and Jim Davidson’s Generation Game. Jess later joined the comic in his X-certificate panto Sinderella (corr) with Charlie Drake.

In his private life, Jess has just celebrated his 60th wedding anniversary with former model Renee in their new home in Smarden, near Ashford.

He met her on the set of a commercial.

Jess said: “I was sharing a flat in London with Michael Caine and Terence Stamp. We’d worked out that as we were all on the telly we could get to go out with model girls. One night I saw Renee in an advert for Camay soap and was determined to meet her.

“Normally, we’d call our agents to get the girls’ phone numbers. But the following day, before I could do that, I met her on the set of another advert. She had to climb on the back of my Vespa scooter.

“I apologised that she could only see my back but she said my back was better than a lot of other bloke’s fronts. That sealed it for me.

“Unfortunately, pop stars in those days couldn’t be seen to be married. So we went to Holland, where she comes from, and wed in secret.”

Jess was born Gerald James in Brixton on February 24, 1936, and was dubbed Jesse by schoolmates after the cowboy Jesse James.

When it came to getting his Equity union card someone else was using his name so the wannabe actor took on his nickname and added Conrad after the author Joseph Conrad.

The show needed regular interventions from interviewer and TV producer Simon Withington to keep Jess on track and to stop him going off at a tangent. But that led to its appeal.

As Jess chortled: “I’ve not done bad for a Brixton boy.”

His autobiography “From Blitz To Glitz” is available from Amazon next month.