THE SPECTATOR .. DIARY .. JULY 12TH 204..

Joan Collins’s diary: Why I gave up on Ascot – and where I go instead

Plus: Paparazzi, football and a plane struck by lightning

Joan Collins 12 July 2014

 

Can there be anything more perfect than early July in London, when the sun is shining, the sky a cloudless azure and the temperature hovers in the mid-seventies? Sorry, I still do Fahrenheit. It’s party time everywhere, with all the annual events happening, but I don’t do Ascot any more, too waggish, or Henley, too wet, or Wimbledon, too warm. The former has changed radically over the last 20 years, when I was fiercely censured for borrowing another woman’s Royal Enclosure badge, on a dare that no one would recognise me. Now these high jinks would be deemed innocent in comparison to the behaviour that goes on: people snogging, passing out and throwing up in public hardly raise an eyebrow. Everyone was super-elegant then, most women wearing gorgeous hats and outfits. But sadly dressing up seems out of fashion today, which I sorely miss as I enjoy the fun of wearing a fabulous outfit, looking good and getting compliments. I would have thrived during ‘La Belle Époque’ — ah well, maybe in the next life!

I thought this life was about to come to a nasty end last week when our plane travelling back to Heathrow was hit by lightning. We had been on a mile-long trek to our gate through Malpensa airport, where the amount of tourist shops, boutiques and feeding troughs make Gatwick airport look like a corner shop. A paparazzo was in pursuit and when I ducked into the bathroom to try and shake him, I banged my finger on the loo door. While I was running it under the cold water, I was besieged by a gaggle of Italian matrons demanding ‘Aaah, Alexis, pleeeze can we take your picture?’

I’m usually quite sanguine when flying BA, but with my finger encased in an ice pack I found it hard to relax with the latest Speccie. Suddenly a violent flash of white light just outside my window illuminated the plane, which jolted and shook violently. ‘What was that?’ I yelped. ‘It’s the paparazzi and the Italian ladies,’ joked Percy, ‘They’ve strapped themselves to the wing to get your picture.’ He looked quite calm, as did the flight attendants, so I stopped worrying about the possibility that this was a botched attempt by a terrorist wearing the latest in internal explosive devices, and continued reading. As we walked off the plane, the special services representative asked if we were very much shaken by the lighting strike she’d heard about. ‘I was petrified!’ Percy confessed — so much for the strong silent type.

With the social whirl in full swing, one of the several fabulous parties we attended last week was the witty and wonderful Adrian Gill’s birthday tea — I shall omit the number after his name, which the press revel in revealing. Hosted by his seven-year-old twins in one of the communal gardens off King’s Road, we had a wonderful time, with the rain bucketing down and all the guests huddling under awnings drinking tea and wine and enjoying themselves in the storm as only the English can. The same night, in the exquisite grounds of Fort Belvedere, Hilary Weston threw one of the grandest and most glamorous parties I’ve ever attended for her husband Galen’s (number again omitted) birthday. The rain came down in sheets as we travelled up to Sunningdale, but miraculously the clouds parted as we arrived revealing glorious sunshine with which to greet so many friends, many of them from the US. It was especially good to welcome back Conrad Black and his beautiful wife Barbara, whom we also saw at the annual Spectator crush, wedged in between Iain Duncan Smith and Norman Lamont.

I’m not a football fan but the Brazil v. Colombia game was so exciting and so dazzlingly packed with talent that I and the rest of my family were riveted to the screen. It was a theatrical bonanza: the fancy footwork would have done credit to Rudolf Nureyev, and the acrobatics, the pushing, the shoving and the histrionics were savagely entertaining. Even to my untrained eye, the players were gifted yet often the game was extremely violent with players constantly kneeing each other in the back and groin. The pitch was littered with prostrate bodies as agonised cries of pain were silently mouthed in close-ups worthy of Cecil B. DeMille. How different from the football played in my daddy’s day. A few times he took me to watch Arsenal, when I was 11 or 12, dressed up as butch as I could muster — the last time my femininity was ever in question. I remember a selection of skinny-legged and knocked-kneed elderly (to me then) men in too-short shorts kicking a ball around a damp brown pitch. I waved my ratchet (whatever happened to them?) and prayed for the boring game to end. My mother was too busy having another baby, which she probably planned in order to avoid having to go.

This article first appeared in the print edition of The Spectator magazine, dated 12 July 2014

 

THE SPECTATOR ... JOAN'S DIARY ... APRIL 25TH 2014

Joan Collins’s Diary: Springtime in the City of Angels

Plus: The British actors who’ve mastered an American accent, and the basements of Belgravia

0 Comments Joan Collins 26 April 2014

Freddy Highmore and Vera Farmiga star as Norman and Norma Bates in Bates Motel

Ahh! Spring has sprung at last! Or has it? Leaving a warm and sunlit London last month we expected balmy weather in Los Angeles but the skies were grey and murky and, like Lena Horne sang in ‘The Lady is a Tramp’: I hate California, it’s cold and it’s damp. It’s necessary to dress in three layers in the City of Angels. It can be seriously frosty in the early morning, when the movers and shakers don their sweats and pant down the boulevards of Sunset and Beverly. By mid-afternoon, however, it’s boiling and everyone strips to sleeveless. Not that Los Angelinos are big in the sartorial stakes. Whenever Percy and I are in the lift, wearing what we consider normal wear for a restaurant dinner, someone will invariably blurt out ‘Gee, you’re so dressed up! Doing something special tonight?’ Trainers, baseball caps, jeans and tees are perfectly acceptable in every boite in this state of milk and honey, but just let them try getting into LouLou’s!
Iconic star Mickey Rooney died last week, age 92, to outpourings of grief from his many fans, although ’tis said he wasn’t exactly Mr Popularity with his colleagues. But his conquests were legendary. Rooney was almost the last of the stars from the fabulous golden era of Hollywood, which lasted from the 1920s to the mid-1950s. I arrived there as a very young actress at the very end of this golden age — when the gilt was beginning to tarnish — and I was practically the last starlet to be put under contract. When I met Rooney shortly after I arrived, I learnt how quick with a quip this nine-times-wed actor could be. Looking me up and down, he leered ‘Hey! Didn’t we use to be married?’ ‘No, that was Ava Gardner,’ I riposted.

An actor’s (or actress’s) life has never been easy. For all the wealth and fame Rooney achieved, he was reported to have left an estate of only $18,000. The perception is that actors are a lucky pampered lot who work in a glamorous and easy profession. The sad fact is that 90 per cent of actors earn well below the minimum wage and their ‘shelf life’ is extremely short, and as they get older it’s the law of diminishing returns. My agent announced that in the 100 pilots currently in development this season, there were only two significant roles for women over 60. This is why I’ve always believed that all actors (and actresses!) should add another string to their bow. Man does not live on Shakespeare alone, to paraphrase, which is why after writing several books I was delighted to launch my own line of beauty and skincare products. As I’ve been big on make-up since I was a teenager, I feel I’m quite an expert on the subject of paint and potions, and I firmly believe makeup is the best skincare treatment you can have: ‘Botox no! Base yes!’

The quiet and lovely street in Belgravia which I moved to more than 20 years ago is now groaning under a sea of vans, trucks and assorted building-related vehicles — it is nothing but a long building site. Workmen are excavating many metres below the basements of these empty listed houses, and very empty they are too, even after they’re finished. Sadly many of the residents of this famous street don’t live here, as most are in their own country, wherever that may be.
It’s astonishing, the number of great British actors who are now featuring in American sitcoms and series and have a completely authentic American accent. There was a time when many British actors’ American accents were execrable, but this new breed is right on the button. I remember the late Laurence Harvey in The Manchurian Candidate and Butterfield 8 giving us his Yankee accent and it was quite risible. We were good friends and often laughed about it. But now — quelle différence! I had no idea Damian Lewis of Homeland fame was from St John’s Wood, nor that Hugh Laurie, so brilliant in House, was educated at Eton and Cambridge. Christian Bale and Ewan McGregor are always terrific, and Anglo-Irish Daniel Day Lewis was indistinguishable from the most famous American of all time, ‘Honest Abe’ Lincoln. But the young man who seamlessly not only plays a completely believable American, but also is the virtual reincarnation of Anthony Perkins at the same time, is the 22 year-old Freddie Highmore in the riveting Bates Motel, a series which explores the back-story of Hitchcock’s Psycho. Freddie Highmore gives a terrifying yet vulnerable performance as an awkward, disturbing teenager — along with a stellar supporting cast including the always impeccable Vera Farmigia, he makes this series unmissable TV.

Joan Collins is an actress and businesswoman. Joan’s new book Passion for Life is available now.