By Garth Pearch

One thing’s for sure - he is a survivor. There is no star who has been doing it longer or louder. But perhaps the secret of Mick Jagger’s success, at 58, is that he always delivers surprises. And he is about to serve up another. Jagger has produced his first film after six years of trying - an unexpectedly traditional and thoroughly British spy thriller.

Enigma, set in the Second World War, is patriotic, reporting the inside story of Britain’s triumph in breaking the codes of Nazi Germany. It comes with confidence from a Brylcreemed age, when morals were stricter, deals were done on a handshake and four-letter words were not used in female company.

Jagger, through his Jagged Films, bought the rights for the Robert Harris bestseller based on the true story of the code and cipher experts at Bletchley Park, Hertfordshire, Britain’s top-secret Station X. "The story is set in 1943, the year I was born," he says. "The Official Secrets Act made sure that no-one knew about the codebreaker’s work until the 1970s. I had not known anything about it until I read the book. It was one of the last secrets of the war, which I found fascinating. It was worth the effort to get it made, but it has dominated so much of my life."

That life does not seem to have slowed in the process. He has a girlfriend, Sophie Dahl, at 23 almost young enough to be his granddaughter. He has been in the recording studio, putting down tracks for the Rolling Stones’ latest album, which will include his first duet since the 1985 number one hit with David Bowie, ‘Dancing In The Street’. This duet will be with U2’s frontman, Bono. He is also preparing the Stones’ 40th anniversary next year, with an ambitious world tour for which the average arena concert seat in America will be £70. On top of all this, there is a personal maze, which includes money pouring out of his vast fortune on ex-wives, girlfriends and children.

It does seem to be taking its toll. At a distance, he doesn’t look so bad. Before we met, I saw him from some 20 yards, talking to film director Michael Apted in the heart of the Leicestershire countryside. An old steam train was being shunted into position for a key scene, coal was being loaded, around 50 extras in 1940s fashions were being assembled and stars Dougray Scott and Kate Winslet had been summoned from their trailers. Jagger’s long hair, slim frame and agitated movements made him look more like a young film runner than a producer. At any moment, I thought he might dash across to the catering wagon and bring back a tray full of tea.

But, close up, it’s a different story. The lines on his pale face are like tracks on the nearby railway; there is a mass of grey bedded deep in the brown hair, which will only be kept at bay by more dye; his figure, never full, now bears the burden of keeping himself so thin and worked out for so long. The shoulders appear stooped, as if carrying the weight of a film on top of all his normal baggage is wearing him down.

"I am a bit knackered, actually," he admits. "A film never stops. There is still the editing, the music and the marketing to go even when we finish here. There’s also the question of what next? I have more to buy, more things I’ve written, outlines of stories and I don’t know what is going to be first. I am just in the middle of trying to option a bestseller. I don’t need the money to pay the rent, at the moment, so why am I doing it?"

Why, indeed. The answer? "I was not exactly talked into starting a film company, but so many people said that I should," he says. "I acted in a few films and I have always been interested. But if it had been left to my own devices, it would never have happened. Although I am hard-working, I am also slightly lazy, which I have constantly had to fight against. So I would have said: ‘Sounds good - but I can’t be bothered.’ Eventually, I was sitting around in Los Angeles and one of these guys in the movie business offered me a deal. I thought: ‘It seems fated that I should get involved.’"

Once Jagger was involved, pride took over. He bought the rights to the Harris book and talked himself to a standstill. "We could not get the American money to make this unless we changed it to an American story," he says. "And how can you transplant this to somewhere like Philadelphia?"

Anything is possible in Hollywood, of course. The Americans produced a successful film last year, U-571, in which history was rewritten yet again and the capture of the Enigma code was preposterously put down to the good ol’ US of A.

Jagger snorts at the thought: "I am not against artistic licence, but let’s keep to facts," he says. "And if the Americans were doing this, they would have some great-looking hero figure as the lead. I am not saying that Dougray Scott is not good looking, but he has to play a fairly weedy-looking maths genius. He lost more than 20lbs in weight for the part and was prepared to look like he lived his life through figures on a page. I met up with him in Los Angeles. I knew him from Ever After, because my kids dragged me along. I also saw him play the villain in Mission:

Impossible 2 in which he was great. But this is the hallmark of good quality British actors - they can play anyone and anything."

The film faithfully follows the Harris blend of fiction and fact. The facts include the work at Bletchley itself, opened by the government amid much secrecy in 1938, a year before the war, where eventually 12,000 would be employed. The Enigma machine was the main coding device used by the German armed forces and rail system. They never discovered that, after a machine was captured by the British from a U-boat, a vast team of mathematicians, linguists, electrical engineers and intelligence specialists at Bletchley were able to break their codes. The knowledge was used to help shorten the war by many months.

The fictional top-spin is a story based on an unexpected change by Nazi U-boats of the code by which they communicate with each other and German High Command. A merchant shipping convoy from America, crossing the Atlantic with 10,000 passengers and vital supplies, is in danger of attack. The authorities turn for help to one man who can save them: Tom Jericho (Scott), a brilliant, but flawed, young mathematician.

It is an absorbing film which delivers an authentic story through the cobwebs of time. And it is clear that Jagger’s name eventually added some pulling power to get lift-off. Tom Stoppard, Britain’s best living playwright, with a superb track record over 30 years, including an Oscar for Shakespeare in Love, was hired to deliver a screenplay. Michael Apted, who successfully directed the last James Bond film, agreed to direct. And Jagger hired some of the best young British talent around, including the scene-stealing actor Jeremy Northam as the spymaster, Wigram.

"I believe in British films and British talent," says Jagger. "It is no secret that we’ve had some of the best technicians and film crews around for years. We are now getting a crop of strong, young actors coming through who are acceptable to Americans and American audiences. I am not against having an American actor in any future film, so long as they are good. Where it goes wrong is having to employ an American who is no good, just to keep the financiers happy. I wished I could have made just one phone call and done the whole deal, but I couldn’t.

He could have made one call, of course: to his own bank manager. But Jagger, canny as ever, would not be drawn on putting in money from his own personal fortune, which stands at a reputed £150m. "I put in seed money, but not heavy stuff," he says, slightly awkwardly. "It is an absolute rule."

He is also even more sensitive to finances than usual, having signed away his mansion in Richmond Upon Thames, Surrey in 1999, to partner Jerry Hall after their final break-up. She also took £7m and a monthly maintenance. When Hall finally gave up on their relationship, after one Jagger affair too many, he contested their ‘divorce’ on the successful grounds that their ‘marriage’ in Bali in 1990 was not legal.

They have four children from their 23 years together: Elizabeth Scarlett, 17; James, 15; Georgia May, eight and three year-old Gabriel. He is also paying out on a young son, Lucas, with Brazilian model Luciana Morad, who both live in a £1,800 a month apartment in Manhattan.

So what is the latest on Jagger’s complex personal life? The man who used to be an icon of rebellion can still shock many with the average age of his girlfriends. Model Sophie Dahl, aged 23, is not to be confused with Venezuelan Vanessa Neumann - known as The Cracker from Caracas - aged 29. Nor socialite and novelist Ortensia Visconti. And whatever happened to twentysomething models Carla Bruni and Jana Rajlich?

"I make it a rule these days to keep my mouth shut on such things," he says, warily. "A lot of people make it up as they go along. Why should I add anything?" He is jumpy on quite a few things these days and this interview is his first for a long time. When we met, he wanted to telephone his personal publicist to check on whether he should talk at all. Someone tactfully pointed out that this was not 1966 any more and he was a couple of years short of being 60. Perhaps he was grown up enough to make his own decisions?

"I decided, when I started in all this, that I was not going to be heavy-handed and wanted to keep a low profile," he explains. "I did not want to come on to the film set very often. And, when I did, I wanted to be encouraging. Since it was my idea in the first place and I got the whole deal together, it is very tempting to have a lot to say. But I have learned a lot of lessons in my life - and that is one of them."

Enigma premieres at the Edinburgh Film Festival, August 18, Edinburgh Odeon (0131-623 8030), 6pm and UGC (0131-623 8030), August 19, 1pm. UK release, September 28

Source: Scotland on Sunday