When world-famous artist Salvador Dali asked for an angel, he got Antony Banwell.

Antony, 64, from Hadlow Close, Brighton, was 25 when a group of young women approached him at a swimming pool in France.

They told him Dali, the surrealist painter best known for paintings such as The Persistence Of Memory, needed "an angel" for his latest work.

Antony went to meet Dali later that day. He ended up starring in one of the late artist's paintings and a surrealist film.

Antony, also known as Drako, said: "I was a dancer at the Lido in Paris and I was at a swimming pool and some women came up to me and said, 'We must take you with us - we are going to see Dali'.

"They said Dali had asked them to bring him an angel. I wasn't shocked but just put on my jeans and we went to a big hotel and walked into his room.

"The first word he always said was a roaring bonjour. He told me to get undressed and turn around and around, which I did in the centre of the suite.

"While I did this he sketched and he asked me to go down to his home because he wanted me to model for him for a painting."

Antony spent several hours a day over a week posing for Dali.

He said: "He was fantastic, very hospitable, always drank pink champagne and used to listen to grand music while he was painting.

"His wife, Gala, taught me how to read Russian tarot and tell fortunes."

The finished painting was called La Peche Au Thon, or the Tuna Fishers, a surreal collage of men searching the waters for fish.

Both Antony's back and front are used in the picture, along with a disembodied hand.

Dali was so impressed with the young dancer that he later invited him to appear in one of his films, The Soft Portrait Of Salavdor Dali As Seen By Himself.

Although Antony has never seen the film he remembers having to break out of an egg and push a wheelbarrow full of pebbles during his sequences.

If Antony was not fazed by his brush with fame, it was probably because he already had stage experience at venues including the London Palladium.

In the Fifties he had shared bills there with Harry Secombe and Max Bygraves.

He said: "I was Little Jack Horner in a production of Humpty Dumpty when I worked with Max Bygraves during my first job in London. I can't say I really liked him because he was a bit boring."

Since meeting Dali, who died in 1989, Antony has worked in a variety of jobs including cooking and singing.

He has transformed his one-bedroom flat into a shrine to the surreal, with postcards and pictures covering most of the walls, and has grown a moustache resembling Dali's.

Dali's paintings of nightmares or hallucinations often include figures drawn with extreme realism.

His output also included sculpture, jewellery design and theatrical work.

In addition he made surrealist movies and contributed a dream sequence to Alfred Hitchcock's 1945 film Spellbound.