Joan Collins | The Spectator columnists & writers

I am completely and utterly devastated by the passing of our wonderful, inspirational Queen, as I’m sure are so many in our fair isles. It is the end of the brilliant Elizabethan era. I was so proud to have been part of her last Jubilee. After being driven along the circuitous pageant route around London, I finished up seated in the Royal Box, waving at Her Majesty in what would prove to be her last appearance on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, where she sparkled in emerald green. This brought back memories of May 1945, when we were all celebrating the end of the second world war. My father drove his Riley Saloon as close to the gates of Buckingham Palace as was allowed, so that my mother, my sister Jackie and I could wave to the royal family while surrounded by cheering crowds.

Oscars diary: a jaw-dropping night

Oscar week is intense – and it’s been a while since it’s been as intense. The red carpet is full of eager paparazzi and interviewers waiting for a photo opportunity or a quotable gaffe. My husband and I went to a couple of parties, but the most coveted is the Vanity Fair Oscar viewing dinner at the Annenberg Center. About 100 people are invited by editor Radhika Jones, and we were delighted to be among the chosen few. The ceremony was long and snoozy, and people were scrolling down their phones for entertainment when suddenly one of the most celebrated actors in Tinseltown, Will Smith, rushed to the stage and bashed the comedian Chris Rock in the face. You could almost hear the collective jaw-drops in the silence of that room.

My clash with Maureen Lipman

After my Unapologetic Diaries were published recently, I was apparently accused of offending several people. At a lavish Christmas lunch attended by celebrities, stars and a smattering of royals, I was mortified to find that my place card was next to one of my alleged victims. What should I do? Apologise? Grovel? What I had said in my diary was just repeating what a mutual friend had whispered to me about this individual. At drinks, I made Piers Morgan aware of the situation. He hooted victoriously, ‘Finally, I’m not the most reviled person in the room!’ then said he would save me further embarrassment by doing the unthinkable and swapping my placement round. With Piers next to me instead, the lunch was a little less tricky but uncomfortable nevertheless.

After London lockdown, LA is like Disneyland

When I arrived a month ago, one wouldn’t believe LA was suffering a major pandemic. The roads were still busy with fast cars, the freeways choked when we ventured on to them, all vehicles seeming to be dodgem cars, zooming across the lanes with ferocious abandon. There was a major accident recently in front of my building. I looked out of my window at a speeding sports car, which had been careening down the boulevard at 120 mph and had crashed into another expensive car (as well as a few others on the way). It had been cut in half and exploded into flames. Both drivers died. Sadly, there’s an epidemic of young rich boys playing speed games on the wide boulevards. I hear, from members of their social group, that their pathetic excuse is that because the clubs are closed and there is nowhere for them to go at night, this is how they ‘let off steam’.

Vaccination is the only way out of this catastrophe

Monday started with me opening my bedroom windows to let what little light there is come through, only to find two workmen on my balcony looking surprised that anyone lived in the building. Since my shooing gestures weren’t understood, I had to step outside, putting myself inside the regulatory two metres, to tell them to ‘get off my land’. As they weren’t even wearing masks, I now am worried they could have been carrying Covid. My landlord is carrying out external redecorations. Is this truly ‘essential’ work? I asked. When so many are not allowed to work at all, and have to isolate at home, must I be subjected to scaffolding outside my windows, like prison bars, and workmen trampling all over the place, using hammer drills, shouting and generally making life miserable? It reminds me of the old joke in the days when the binmen used to collect your garbage.

Joan Collins: The politics of Christmas trees

To say that the past nine months have been tough is like saying a hurricane felt like a spring shower. For many people it must have been utter hell, particularly those who own hospitality businesses. I simply cannot imagine how they could plan and manage ahead when our government refused to give anyone a clue whether either of the lockdowns was genuinely going to end. It all reminds me of the silly children’s game Grandmother’s Footsteps, in which players attempt to creep up behind ‘Grandmother’. If she turns and catches them moving, they must return to the beginning. We always seem to be returning to the beginning. Lockdown all over again. Except the rules of Grandmother’s Footsteps are at least clear. Boris Johnson kept saying: ‘Go out’, ‘Stay at home’, ‘Wear a mask if you go out’, ‘But you can’t go out, so go home’.

Joan Collins: my face mask fight with the gendarmerie

It’s three days since rumours swirled around France that President Macron was going to impose a ‘tit-for-tat’ quarantine on UK visitors. While waiting for the axe to fall, several friends who had booked flights to visit us in Saint-Tropez were unsure whether to come or not. Julian Clary, who had already accepted the fact that he was going to have to quarantine upon his return home to London, told me: ‘I don’t mind having to stay at home — what I mind is not being able to visit my mother.’ ‘Well, I haven’t seen my eldest two children or my grandchildren for nearly six months,’ I retorted. There seems to be no end in sight, as morning, noon and night the media blasts out theories and rumours, about what we can and cannot do and where we are allowed or not allowed to go.

The terrible ageism of our current lockdown

I’ve always thought western society was terribly ageist, and I don’t just mean ‘showbiz’ folk but across the board. Then our government insisted the ‘overseventies’ (horrible expression) were part of the ‘vulnerables’ (an even more horrible expression) and should remain in lockdown (the most horrible expression of all) until a vaccine is found. That was utter discrimination against the hardy individuals who have no health issues. But more harmful was bolstering the existing belief among the general public (and prospective employers) that the old should keep out of everyone’s way. Just before lockdown we were planning to have dinner with Piers Morgan and when I texted him to check if it was still on, I received a manifesto explaining that he ‘didn’t want to be responsible’ for my untimely death! The 88-year-old actor who plays Ken Barlow in Coronation Street is allegedly barred from work for this same reason.

The revenge of the oldies

Entering my 54th day of quarantine, I recall how much I was looking forward to this spring in England. There were so many exciting events and celebrations planned. Several friends were throwing big birthday bashes; I was picking up a couple of awards, performing my one-woman show, going to Cannes, and most exciting of all, participating in a plethora of events surrounding the VE Day celebrations. All of the above have gone with the proverbial wind, except for, in a small way, the latter. The Queen’s Pageant Master, Bruno Peek, asked me if I could lead the nation’s toast to our heroes and heroines of the second world war. VE Day dawned sunny and hot. Percy and I festooned the balcony with Union Flags and bunting, and at 3 p.

Joan Collins: Parasite didn’t deserve to win Best Picture

Recovering from a bad cold and bored to tears by the fare on television, Netflix, Amazon and Hulu (it’s shocking how much schlock there is with so many choices), I broke open a big box set of Dynasty and started binge watching. It occurred to me that I had actually never seen the series, except for a few snippets here and there, and I was curious to see the reason why the show’s ratings started to plummet after the fifth season. Was it the hideousness of the clothes? Mine weren’t so bad, sometimes, but the skirts and trousers were so baggy and shapeless that, coupled with the enormous shoulder pads, they made all of us look about four foot ten. They also watered the storyline down by bringing in a plethora of characters portrayed by big names such as Charlton Heston, Barbara Stanwyck, Ali MacGraw, Rock Hudson and my pal George Hamilton so that it would have been difficult for some viewers to figure out who was who.

Women have to fight back to stay on top

I recently tried to put my profession down as ‘actress’ on Instagram, but the only option available from the drop-down menu was ‘actor’. Why? Actress is such a graceful word, so evocative of elegance, refinement and poise that the common and blunt ‘actor’ cannot possibly conjure. It’s even worse when we are referred to as ‘female actors’. How utterly contemptuous and disrespectful towards women. We have fought long and hard for equality only to be lumped in with the male appellative in the rat race of showbiz — some victory. Although many other actresses agree with me, it appears that the younger generation think my view is old-fashioned and ridiculous. I hear the term ‘mother’ is also becoming démodé and ‘parent’ is the PC word to use on a birth certificate.

Joan Collins: I’m an actress, not an actor. And yes, it matters

Joan Collins: why I love London taxi drivers

Percy and I have seen quite a few movies recently and enjoyed many of them, which is rare. But the most enjoyable was Judy, for the performance of its star, Renée Zellweger. I met Judy Garland many times when I had just arrived in Hollywood as a young starlet and I can tell you that Renée resembles her uncannily, both physically and emotionally. Judy was fragile and birdlike, but her voice was strong and magical. I watched her sing at a party given by the legendary songwriter Sammy Cahn, who accompanied her on the piano. Apart from Miss Garland’s brilliant voice, it was fascinating to watch the audience. People who were great stars in their own right — Frank Sinatra, Rosalind Russell and Billy Wilder — were entranced by her performance.

Women With Balls

The Joan Collins Edition

20 min listen

Women With Balls

The Joan Collins Edition

20 min listen

Dame Joan Collins is an actress, author, and entrepreneur. Her acting career spans three quarters of a century, including 1950s Hollywood movies, to her role as Alexis Carrington in Dynasty. In this episode, she talks to Katy about breaking into acting as a young woman, what she thinks about Love Island, and why she supports both Boris Johnson and Brexit.Presented by Katy Balls.

Diary - 4 July 2019

It has been a spring of party madness in London and New York. I was lucky enough to have several birthday parties thrown for me in both cities, including Evgeny Lebedev’s glamorous soirée at which Nigel Farage announced that he was no longer being served at any pub in Brussels, which may explain why he’s cut down on the drinking. There was also the ultra-glam Met Ball in New York: Dame Anna Wintour mingling with a half-naked Lady Gaga; divine Bette Midler in top-to-toe black sequins and a top hat, dancing with the talented Julianne Moore (wearing green sequins) and Cher in ripped jeans and an anorak. Not to be too bitchy (oh, go on!), but I thought Katy Perry dressed as a hamburger was a touch de trop, even for the party’s theme of ‘camp’.

Diary - 6 December 2018

I recently returned from several months in Los Angeles working on one of the most popular US TV shows. American Horror Story is a mysteriously scary but fascinating series of interconnecting stories created, produced and written by Hollywood’s latest wunderkind Ryan Murphy. In the past decade, he was the brilliance behind such hits as Nip/Tuck, Glee and my particular favourite, Feud, a fascinating study of the enmity between two great legends of the silver screen, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. More recently his output has trebled with The Assassination of Gianni Versace, a nine-part series about the tragic events involving the fabled Italian designer, and the mesmerising trial of O.J. Simpson in The People vs O.

Diary - 30 August 2018

Attending my goddaughter Cara Delevingne’s 26th birthday party at the trendy Chateau Marmont hotel in LA, I was interested to see how today’s young dress to party. Forget the fairy frocks, cocktail dresses and lounge suits I remember from my Hollywood parties in the golden age; it was shorts, ragged jeans and T-shirts emblazoned with cryptic messages for the boys, and minute, fabric-saving, low-cut dresses for the gals. Or perhaps it was the other way around. Fortunately the Chateau hasn’t yet succumbed to the fad for gender-neutral toilets that almost every institution in the UK has adopted. Where is a girl supposed to apply some lippy and have a quiet gossip nowadays? These temples of privacy and comfort are slowly being stripped away from us ladies and it’s time to reclaim them before we are reduced to locking ourselves in the supply cupboard to get some ‘me time’ or to escape the clutches of a predatory boss.

Expressing an opinion about #MeToo is fraught with danger

Hollywood is in an uproar. Some actresses have discovered that some actors and producers are nasty sexual predators. Oh really? Expressing an opinion about this is fraught with danger, so I shall refrain before it’s ‘off with her head’ to me. Nevertheless, if these accusations towards men continue much longer, I fear a major decline in population growth in the near future. An agent I know, who was negotiating a deal for a client, was accused by a female producer of being ‘a bully’ and warned that she was going to expose him because ‘Hollywood doesn’t like bullies’. If she really wanted to know what a bully was like, she should have dealt with super-agent Sue Mengers. A play about her was aptly named I’ll Eat You Last.

Diary - 8 February 2018

I’ve been meaning to write a Spectator diary since the summer but as a Gemini with Aries rising I find I have the annoying trait (just the one?) of being too easily distracted. Not by social media as so many are — Twittering and Instagramming only grab my attention for a couple of minutes each day. No, what entrances me are movies, and the wonderful cornucopia of films available on Sky, Netflix, Amazon, iTunes and so many platforms proffering my preferred pastime on my big-screen TV. I refuse to be hunched over a tiny screen downloading the latest blockbuster from Disney or DreamWorks. I search for and find, like an eager fisherman, the classics: Bogart and Bergman in Casablanca (I’ve seen it 50 times at least), Kelly and Reynolds in Singin’ in the Rain (40 times), Davis and Henreid in Now, Voyager, Grant and Kelly in To Catch a Thief (not so many times — it’s not a repeater like the others) and hundreds more.

Diary - 29 December 2016

Every year, from mid-November to mid-January, dozens of DVDs drop through my letterbox. These are most of the movie releases of the past year. It is with great anticipation that I tear open the yellow padded envelopes from Sony or Disney or The Weinstein Company, and even from companies I’ve never heard of; but invariably it’s with disappointment that I scan the hundreds of titles unknown to me, and I do read Screen Daily and the Hollywood Reporter. I’m amazed that the production companies manage to finance some of these films. I know from whence I speak. However, snuggled up on the sofa in the days before Christmas I dutifully watch all the films in preparation to vote in the Bafta and Academy Awards. It’s like training for a marathon.

Diary - 10 November 2016

Seeing Trump win reminds me of a season of Dynasty in which my character, Alexis, ran for governor of Colorado against her nemesis, Blake Carrington. We used a bunch of dirty tricks, from kidnappings to accusations of murder, to embarrass, undermine and knife each other in the back. Viewers scoffed. Politicians would never do anything so underhanded and evil to each other. Really? As hysterical as America gets, however, it’s still more peaceful than London. Our quiet residential street in Belgravia now resembles a building site. There are massively major renovations underway on the buildings to our left, to our right, the four flats above us, and two directly opposite us. To say this is tiresome is like saying Donald Trump is no wallflower.

Diary - 19 May 2016

Not only are today’s young girls having to work hard on their abs, butts and glutes, now the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow and Kim Kardashian are instructing the poor lambs in the art of keeping their ‘lady garden’ in mint condition. Subject to the approval of their best mates, apparently, the formerly taboo subject of ‘down south’ is now open for discussion. Some celebs now cultivate, manicure and moisturise the ‘no-fly zone’ with as much effort as they put into their faces. Whatever next? Will Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt suddenly inform all studs how to take care of their gentleman’s gentleman? I’ve been on Twitter for four years now but only have a paltry 150,000 followers, perhaps because I keep away from controversy.

Even for an agnostic like me, there’s something magical about Christmas

Every 6 January I breathe a sigh of relief as I take down and store the enormous number of Christmas decorations with which I festoon my house. ‘Never again!’ I say to Percy, ‘Let’s go away next Christmas.’ But when the following November rolls around, all is forgotten and the boxes of goodies are brought out with much excitement and anticipation and I start to deck the halls all over again. Christmas is a joyous time in our house and I never fail to revel in it. I’m not a religious person, nor am I an atheist. I’m more of an agnostic, really. But I was raised with Christian values by a Church of England mother to the amusement of my Jewish father and my ‘hovering Buddhist’ uncle George, who’d been in a Japanese concentration camp.

Christmas Notebook | 10 December 2015

As I strolled through the aisles in a large department store, I almost choked when I read a large display that blared: ‘Don’t forget to treat your pussy at Christmas…’ with relief I read the rest of the ad: ‘…and your bow-wow too!’ Beneath the dubious banner lay a massive display of beautifully wrapped chew toys, scratching posts and all manner of treats and playthings. That’s when I realised this entire Christmas practice has gone truly bonkers. Every 6 January I breathe a sigh of relief as I take down and store the enormous number of Christmas decorations with which I festoon my house. ‘Never again!’ I say to Percy, ‘Let’s go away next Christmas.’ But when the following November rolls around, all is forgotten and the boxes of goodies are brought out with much excitement and anticipation and I start to deck the halls all over again.

Diary - 5 November 2015

I had only experienced great loss when my mother died. It was desperately harrowing, but not as harrowing as the news that my sister Jackie had passed away. My mother had suffered a long lingering illness but Jackie only told me about her cancer two weeks before she died. It was a shattering, heart-breaking blow that I still haven’t assimilated and I don’t know if I ever will really get over it. I expect one learns to live with loss but she remains as vivid in my heart and my mind as if she were still alive. Jackie was a special woman, not because she was my sister but because of her indomitable spirit, amazing energy, generosity, kindness and warmth. To have written five books after being diagnosed with cancer seven and a half years ago was a major achievement, not to mention the journey to London last year to receive her well-deserved OBE, and again in March to celebrate my DBE.

Palace Notebook

The day of my investiture at Buckingham Palace dawned bringing freezing rain and fierce winds, which lashed at the windows as I regarded the outfit I had painstakingly planned — a lightweight, cream wool suit. A little damp didn’t bother me, so I didn’t care if I’d be shivering as Prince Charles pinned the medal on to my cape. No — it was the fate of the hat that worried me most. Designed by milliner Philip Treacy, it was a frothy creation of white grosgrain, chiffon flowers and delicate veiling, and I was concerned about the wind whipping it off. My best friend Judy Bryer said soothingly, ‘Philip has put so much construction inside that even a gale wouldn’t shift it.’ After much primping, my husband Percy, my two oldest children and I drove to the Palace.

Joan Collins’s diary: The joy of fake Christmas trees

Every year Christmas comes earlier and earlier in America. Cards, baubles and imitation trees were being sold in the big department stores in August, and the street decorations have been up in Beverly Hills since well before Halloween. From late October onwards, it’s the season of dressing up and showing off in downtown LA. Street parades are all the rage and hundreds of thousands of people saunter around in costumes, some gorgeous, most grotesque. Infants and children are usually done up as baby chicks or bunnies, which is inoffensive — but some adults go beyond the boundary of what is acceptable. On Santa Monica Boulevard I saw one inordinately fat man dressed as ‘Baby Jane’, wearing only a pink crop top and miniskirt that displayed an offensive excess of hairy back and avoirdupois.

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

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.

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

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.

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