Little Rock, Arkansas- A TRANSEXUAL porn actress who had a close friendship with snakebite victim Garrick Wales told yesterday of the “different world” they secretly shared before his death in America.

Joanna Jet, who describes herself as a “she-male” with a taste for champagne and sexual depravity, revealed how she enjoyed a “very special friendship” with the father of three – in a world far removed from his family life in Scotland.

“I knew a completely different side to Garrick, the different lifestyle, the different likes and dislikes,” she said, speaking by telephone yesterday. “How we came to meet was through similar interests, fine champagne, fine food. It was a completely different world to his family world.

“Our relationship was just between the two of us and his family didn’t know anything about it until after his demise. It’s not been good for Garrick’s family, especially in view of my lifestyle. I don’t fit the traditional nine-to-five role model.”

The body of Mr Wales, 48, was found behind the wheel of a rented Chevrolet Blazer parked in a lane on the perimeter of Little Rock airport in Arkansas, on 13 May.

The previous morning he had visited the Delta Airlines cargo office to collect a box of highly venomous snakes he had ordered from a reptile dealer in Florida.

The snakes – a deadly black mamba, green mamba, forest cobra and African twig snake – were found on 14 May, dumped on a grass verge half a mile from where Mr Wales died. The whereabouts of a previous consignment sent to him in Little Rock two weeks previously is unknown.

It is now known that Mr Wales required regular blood transfusions to combat the painful and lingering effects of a bite he received from a boomslang snake while walking in South Africa several months ago.

Mr Wales’s wife Pamela – a teacher in Kilmacolm, Renfrewshire, where they lived with their three children – has told police she knew nothing of him having handled snakes since then.

Jet said yesterday she also was unaware, and had never had anything to do with snakes herself, adding: “I have a mini-skirt made of python-skin, but that’s as far as it goes.”

Describing herself as “completely distraught” at his death, she said she had spoken to one of his brothers by telephone and agreed never to speak publicly about the intimate details of the relationship in order to spare Mr Wales’s family.