She’s engaged to Will Carling, England’s rugby captain, and is busy planning their wedding this summer. But she’s also lived with rock star Jeff Beck and sepped out with Eric Clapton. In her first interview on her own, Julia Smith talks about past loves and her romance with the nation’s most eligible sporting hero.

JULIA Smith, 29, is marrying sport’s most eligible bachelor, England’s rugby union captain, Will Carling. She’s also dated Eric Clapton. And, at 18 years old, she dropped out of university to live with the then 39-year-old veteran guitarist and millionaire Jeff Beck, erstwhile lover of fabled Sixties model Celia Hammond.

It’s Julia, the ravishing blonde in a see-through skimpy dress, that you see at post-rugby match dinners. (‘It wasn’t see-through. The photographers made it look like that with high-powered flash,’ she laughs later.) And public relations girl Julia, now publicising Right Said Fred, Aswad and Vanessa Paradis through her company Hands On PR.

She’s not photogenic and is far prettier in the flesh. Slim, with big brown eyes, gentle features, fluid changes of expression, she’s wearing a Mickey Mouse T-shirt, clumpy, adolescent shoes which she takes off to curl her feet underneath her, and a school pinafore-style dress. She’s instantly likeable, with a lovely friendly voice and easy, enchanting and direct manner.

She’s getting married on 18 June in Northamptonshire, with 300 guests and a marquee. ‘A bit of a bun fight. I’d imagined a small wedding. But I’m the only daughter and the youngest,’ she says. The couple have turned down a reputed £20,000 from Hello! to avoid falling victim to its curse. ‘I wouldn’t want to be caught on somebody’s coffee table, no way!’ This week they’ve been choosing hymns. On Sunday night she was with Will at a business conference where everybody had big clipboards and folders and Will sang a good hymn very flatly. This was actually a dream. ‘Will has to endure a diabolical 10 minutes every morning when I recall my weird dreams. He’d probably just like to say ‘shut up’.’ So far family arguments (‘we’re both from very close families’) have been confined to disagreements about the flowers.

The wedding has been a long time coming, as they got engaged in May 1993. ‘It’s the first Saturday he’s had free of rugby commitments to get married.’ Last year Will went on tour to New Zealand for two months. ‘We promised to call each other every day, but it ended up being five times a day. A lot of money from New Zealand. Each call was a good 20 minutes.’ She coped badly and had to join him after three weeks.

She met him first at a dinner party in 1989. ‘I didn’t think an awful lot of him. He didn’t say a word. He was obviously very shy. I felt sorry for him more than anything.’ But they became friends (she had just broken up with Jeff) and would call each other when they were depressed. SHE says: ‘I used to get very low. It’s a typical Piscean trait, very emotional and up and down like a yo-yo. I was very much the loner and would exaggerate things in my mind. Like, ‘Oh God, work was awful today … so I’m going to lose my job.”

Will took her on her first date only last year, a month after they’d both broken up with their respective partners, she says with a big sigh. A month later, he proposed to her in bed. Initially she declined, because she thought he was joking.

Why did it take them four years to get together? ‘We didn’t tell each other that we liked one other. We’re both very shy. I don’t have enough confidence in myself and need encouragement,’ she elaborates. ‘If people are supportive, I’ll feel better about myself. If I’m left to my own devices, I’ll shy away into a hovel.

‘I’m not a party goer. I don’t like going out and would rather stay in in the evening. If I go out, I’ve got to be with people I know really well. Otherwise I’ll close up and daydream, which is my favourite pastime. ‘If someone is talking, I’ll be a million miles away, travelling to countries in my head or dreaming about my wedding day. I’m chirpy and happy on the phone. But if someone says let’s go out for a drink tonight or mix with journalists, I’ll run a mile.’ Her lack of confidence is totally unapparent. Her mother considers her a very good actress; even her body language is relaxed.

Julia’s country childhood was idyllic. She had ponies and her two elder brothers and father, now a retired chartered accountant, doted on her. ‘I was very spoilt and probably still am. I’ve grown out of the stamping my feet syndrome, but I did that until I was about 11. ‘I was a horror at primary school, a real tomboy and always the gang leader. I used to beat up little girls. I used to get in a panic when they went off crying to teacher and bribe them to stop them snitching on me.’ She grins.

She ‘grew up rapidly’ at Oakham Boarding School, Leicestershire. ‘It was fantastic. It was a mixed school but there were a lot more boys.’ She showed early signs of being a man’s woman. ‘I get on better with guys and find it easier to talk to them. I always spoke to my brothers about everything and was my father’s little girl.’ She worked hard to get eight O and three A-levels – ‘I wouldn’t say I’m stupid. I’m just average.’

WHAT happened when she became sexually aware? Aged 18, she lost her virginity to Jeff and left her history degree at Goldsmiths after a term to co-habit. (‘I hated university, standing around stupid bars drinking pints of beer.’) There was a 21-year age discrepancy and they were together for six years. ‘My parents were very laid back about it.’

But the relationship made her very isolated. ‘I lost contact with my friends. There was no one of my age group around me. I was on my own a lot and lonely. It toughened me up.’ She cuddles herself. ‘He wasn’t a father figure. I learned a lot from him, but he wanted me to be a mother to him. I just wasn’t strong enough for that.’ They broke up in 1989.

She had two ‘serious’ relationships before Will, neither with well-known men. ‘I haven’t had that many boyfriends to be quite honest.’ What about Eric Clapton? ‘We just had a laugh and the media immediately thought …’ Did she have an affair with him? ‘No, he was just a mate.’ Why not? ‘I didn’t particularly want to. I didn’t see it as that important.’ She says she wasn’t his confidante, that they don’t keep in touch and she doesn’t want to talk about him.

So, back to Will. She says, exhaling deeply, that it’s difficult to say what makes him tick. ‘He has tremendous drive and ambition. If he wants something, you know damn sure he’s going to get it. He’s less arrogant now, very kind, and thoughtful.’

She sees marriage as a partnership, requiring lashings of trust and honesty. Sexual fidelity is ‘one hundred per cent’ important to them both; she doesn’t have a problem with only ever sleeping with him for the rest of her life; and she has ‘not a clue’ why The Sunday Times asked Will whether he was a repressed homosexual. She has a ‘one per cent’ doubt over committing for life, her anxiety over her own ability to make the marriage work. ‘If I start being stupid then I’ll lose the relationship. If I don’t pay enough attention to it, work takes over or I start looking elsewhere, for other men, that’s my own fault. But that’s a pretty silly thing to do if you’re going to commit to marriage.

‘Because of my lack of confidence, I think maybe he’ll go off me.’ She hugs herself tightly. ‘So I want to make sure that I’m going to be perfect for him for the rest of my life.’ Does she fear divorce? ‘I wouldn’t go into marriage fearing divorce. I can’t see a marriage working if you’re thinking on that level.’

AT THE moment they’re living in rented accommodation, house-hunting in west London and hope eventually to move to the country. She wants to travel before having children. Will, she says, will certainly see his job through until the World Cup next year.