James Brown recalls the day in the mid-90s when, as editor of Loaded magazine, he interviewed the Prime Suspect actor. Then drove her round LA on a bar crawl

I’ve been meeting famous people since I started writing aged 19, but whenever I’m asked who has been the most fun to hang out with I don’t hesitate to say Helen Mirren. She gets the vote ahead of the Beastie Boys, Vic and Bob and New Order.

I was in Los Angeles to do a piece about the TV comedy Married with Children for my magazine Loaded and I saw this brilliant picture of Helen in Marie Claire, lying on her back with her legs up against a wall. I asked Adam, our commissioning editor, if he could get me an interview with her as I really liked Prime Suspect. She was up for it despite it being just a couple of days’ notice, and I had a brilliant time with her. I was very excited when she arrived, she looked so stylish and stunning, and I remember giving her an apple from a bowl on the reception desk. We got on very well from the off.

Helen started climbing over the fence in her heels. It was about 15ft high, but she went up it like Chris Bonington

We hung out at my suite at the Chateau Marmont and then she took me out to a load of bars. She drank, I drove. The very cool young Californians were very much in awe of her. The highlight of the weekend was driving her home on the Saturday night, where she couldn’t open the gate of her large rented Hollywood mansion. So she very quickly started climbing over it in her heels. It was about 15ft high, but she went up it like Chris Bonington. I remember looking in disbelief as she precariously toppled over the top and thinking: “If she falls and hurts herself, I’m going to have to climb over as well, and then the armed response security will show up and it won’t look right at all.”

Thankfully she didn’t fall but buzzed the gates open and insisted I drive her up to the house itself. There she ruffled my hair, said something nice to me and went inside. If I’d spent any longer with her than a weekend I’d have ended up falling totally and teenagedly in love.

I never wrote the story because the person transcribing it had a sudden terminal illness in her family and she naturally left and I never saw the tape again. Last summer Helen bumped into my mate Suggs in Italy and when he told her that he was laughing at a radio podcast I was on, she replied: “Oh, I had a brilliant night out in LA with James.” After 20 years that was nice to hear.

James Brown’s memoir Above Head Height, is published by Quercus at £16.99. To order a copy for £14.44, go to bookshop.theguardian.com