JOAN COLLINS
Iwas sad to hear about the death of Bob Hope, although hitting 100 is a fabulous record — almost like batting 1,000. I worked with Bob several times on his television variety shows and once in a movie, Road to Hong Kong. In the four previous Road films with Bing Crosby, Dorothy Lamour had played the female lead but by Hong Kong she was deemed by the Hollywood hierarchy to be too old, so I was cast to play Bing's love interest at almost 40 years his junior. Bing was taciturn and grumpy through most of the movie in stark comparison with Bob, who was a bundle of laughs all shooting-day long. Reportedly, one of the last jokes he made, two weeks before he died, was on his birthday. When asked, 'How does it feel to be 100?' he quipped, 'Up until noon I don't feel a thing, then it's time for my nap.' What a trouper — he'll be missed.
So Blair is pulling a Mugabe and rigging the referendum on the euro. His plans to allow 700,000 non-citizens living in the UK (culled, no doubt, from the NHS bed waiting-list) to vote on whether or not we must have this pesky little currency are cynical to say the least. Since the French adopted the euro, the cost of running my house in the south of France has risen by almost 30 per cent. Indeed, everything has gone up so dramatically that one can only summon a Gallic shrug and mutter. 'C'est in vie' as the bill for two cafes an lait at Senequier comes to €10, when it used to be a couple of pounds not long ago. Groceries are much more expensive than in England. I was charged E8 (roughly £6) for six lemons at the St Tropez market, and this in a country where lemons are local produce. So watch out, Britain, for if this currency, which looks and feels like stage money, and with which I find it impossible to differentiate between a El coin, a 50 or 20 cent coin, comes storming our Bastille, things are going to get much more depressing than they already are. I'm on the committee of a group which demands a fair referendum, in the hope that the voice of Britain will be heard. Let us pray.
If the TV presenter John Leslie is to be believed, Ulrika Jonsson slept with him shortly after their first meeting and they continued an affair for several weeks. It seems heinous to me that six years later she accuses him in her book (though not by name) of brutally raping her and, furthermore, brushes aside the fact that
they were in a relationship at the time. When I wrote my first autobiography, my agent, the redoubtable, legendary and rather terrifying Irving Swifty' Lazar, told me, 'We don't wanna know who you played opposite, we wanna know who you slept with. Sex sells, sweetheart.' So I dutifully obeyed, named names (after all, we're all grown-ups) and Past Imperfect became a bestseller. There was one alias in there, however, put in for the sake of protecting his marriage, but when pressed to reveal his name, and only after speaking to him about it, I Iessed up. I find it incomprehensible that Jonsson refused to either confirm or deny that Leslie raped her. And why wait years to report it? To get more book sales? Wasn't the nasty Sven-Nancy saga enough? Now she's inspired a bunch of groupies to come out of the woodwork and accuse him of 'assault', ruining his career and reputation and almost bankrupting him. In the case of some men who have a certain cachet in the celebrity world, there are masses of girls who go to extreme lengths to — ahem — get close to them. Do these bird-brains think that when invited to a 6ft Sin celeb's pad at midnight, he just wants to share his cocoa and cookies with them? Jack Lemmon quipped in Some Like it Hot: 'Men! Rough hairy beasts who only want one thing from a girl!' Perhaps they should heed his advice. I don't believe John Leslie is a rapist; I could believe that he may like 'a bit of rough' — I'm not condoning it, but the media and The Swede have put him through hell and it's time the truth came out and he was exonerated (or not) of these accusations.
As3 we all know, the sizzling temperatures f the past week are breaking all known records, so I've spent most of my time and euros in my pool and the oasis of airconditioning in my bedroom. I live high in the hills a few miles from St Tropez and we've had several bad scares. The forest fires came within a mile of the villa, so the local pompiers decided through some marvel of French logic to ensure our safety by putting a large lock on the barrier of the access road from my house to the main road, thereby effectively annulling our escape route had the fire caught in the forest surrounding us. I was, to say the least, not a happy camper for several days until we persuaded the pompiets not to lock our barrier. The mistral winds were tearing along at 80 miles an hour and, coupled with the 100°F heat and the smell and sight of smoke, I was, well.. . '1 wuz scared, Miz Scarlett.' But all's well that ends well, and in spite of constant power cuts (six in the past month) and lock-thirsty pompiers, the sun shines brightly (albeit a touch too hotly for me), and as long as we stay away from the ravening hordes of August, it's bliss up in these hills.
Speaking of ravening hordes, I hope the delightful habit of loutish young Brits flashing body parts at all and sundry when either drunk on holiday or legless on weekends doesn't catch on in the States. I have heard from a friend in LA that they are selling tapes on television of youngsters, mostly British, on their Ibiza holidays, doing the degrading acts we've come to accept as commonplace. In spite of what many people might believe, America is still one of the most civilised places in the world. Generalisations are always tricky, but I've found Yanks for the most part charming and polite and extremely well mannered. The yob culture seems not to have affected vast swaths of their young populace as it has here, and one can go to a baseball, football or basketball game and enjoy it in relative peace without the horrible threat of a violent punch-up or the menacing presence of armed police or military supervision. Attending Wimbledon last month, it was a delight to watch the women's final in an adult and sophisticated surrounding — pray this never changes. Grandmother used to take my mother to the circus to see the fat lady and the tattooed man — now they're everywhere.
Previous page
