Joan Collins

Well it’s all too terribly, terribly exciting: 60 glorious years on the throne of England and almost more than that in my consciousness. I first became aware of the then Princess Elizabeth when I was a young evacuee in Ilfracombe. In my parents’ sudden mad rush from London to escape the Blitz, unnecessary things like toys were left behind. I made do by playing with conkers and skipping on an old frayed rope but it was all rather boring until the woman next door produced a treasure — an old cutting-out book from the 1937 coronation of King George VI. Inside were two pretty cardboard figures of the young princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret Rose, aged about 11 and eight.

Saint Tropez is as bawdy as ever, so we spend most of our time tucked away in the hills. But even our monk-like existence sometimes requires some amusement and when we recently ventured out to one of the most exclusive yet bacchanalian nightclubs, I queued up in the ladies’ room, watching the young amazons fighting for mirror space in their towering heels and tiny skirts. We were all waiting, for what felt like an age, for one of the stall doors to open. Finally, after repeated banging on the painted plywood, two people staggered out, much the worse for wear. One was a man, who sauntered out wiping some white powder from underneath his nose with a sheepish smirk. The girls all shrieked as if they’d never seen a man before — so likely.

When my daughter Katyana was eight years old she fell into a coma in hospital. I would not allow any of the medical staff around her to talk about her condition in a negative fashion. I was convinced that she was able to comprehend what was being discussed around her bedside and that it would somehow affect her recovery. The doctors, interns and nurses all believed I was a raging nutter and I would hear them tut-tutting as they backed away, whispering how sad it was that my daughter didn’t have much of a chance of recovering. Seven weeks later, much to all the medicos’ amazement, Katy started to open her eyes and react to the world around her.

As the President of the Associates of Rada and an ex-Rada student, I was asked to make a speech about my days at the academy for the third-year students and some of my friends.Speech-giving is tough, speech-writing even tougher and I envy Mr Obama and his silky way with words. Does he write them himself, I wonder, or does he have a team of experts crafting his elegant soliloquies? Certainly his recent speech in Kenya was masterful and he verbalised what many people thought for years and dared not speak for fear of offending the Gods of Political Correctness: namely, that Africa is to blame for its recent troubles. My Rada speech was only a teensy bit politically incorrect but nevertheless it seemed to go down quite well.

As Obama-mania engulfs America, I feel that I’m living in the middle of a historical bubble. As Obama-mania engulfs America, I feel that I’m living in the middle of a historical bubble. The palpable excitement that began two months ago, when Obama was elected president, has grown into a great thumping worldwide lovefest. I have never seen such immense pride in a new president. His every move and those of his wife and kids is chronicled, yet amazingly he hasn’t (yet) apparently put a foot wrong, even when snapped chomping on a chilli-dog in a diner. Obama is awe-inspiring. On his train trip from Chicago to Washington, he descended at many stops to speak confidently and eruditely, as he always does, and every speech was different.

Christmas always comes early to Los Angeles. In fact, the slightly tacky decorations hit the lamp-posts even before Thanksgiving. But the really good thing about this time of year in this part of the world is the abundance of new movies being released. They proliferate both in the cinemas, in private screening rooms and in the ‘screeners’, the DVDs that the various studios send to members of the Academy hoping they will vote for them at Oscar time. I’m lucky enough to be one of the 5,000 acting members so I try to see as many of the movies as possible. Happily this year there are some excellent ones and a few great performances. Angelina Jolie in Changeling, James Brolin in W. and Javier Bardem in Che. But the performance that blew me away is Sean Penn in Milk.

We’re back in St Tropez after a whirlwind week in London. The party season is in full swing so I dipped my toes in a couple, and what a difference between two of the most high-profile events that week. One, an exhibition of paintings at a Dover Street Gallery, was given in a large airy room with a wide balcony and pretty garden, in which one could stroll. There was enough space and enough time to chat with groups of friends and acquaintances, who could wander around admiring the great pictures and eat the hors d’œuvres without getting jostled and poked.

We woke up early on Oscar morning to see the hills of Hollywood wreathed in fog, clouds and spitting rain. I shivered in the unseasonable freezing weather. ‘Should be fun on the red carpet this afternoon,’ I said to Percy. Turning on E! channel at 10 a.m. we watched presenters and starlets in strapless gown with goose-pimpled arms talking to various purveyors of footwear and jewels to the stars. Then some young chefs suggested what they would have served at the Governor’s Ball after the event if Wolfgang Puck (the Austrian celebrity chef) hadn’t made the cut.

I’m full of hurrahs, huzzahs, yippee-ki-yays and general end-of-term jubilation now that this gruelling 30-week US tour of Legends has finally ended. I’m full of hurrahs, huzzahs, yippee-ki-yays and general end-of-term jubilation now that this gruelling 30-week US tour of Legends has finally ended. To say it’s been tough is an understatement: 25 cities in 30 weeks, eight shows in six days each week, the days off spent travelling on dodgy airlines and checking into naff hotels (not to mention the gratuitous spitefulness of some critics) have contributed to a great ‘Thank God it’s Friday’ attitude by just about all of our cast and crew. My colleagues Joe Farrell and Will Holman stood in the wings every night as I took my bow (to standing Os!

For years, one of the highlights of the Oscar season was the star-crammed party that über-agent Irving ‘Swifty’ Lazar threw first at the Bistro in Beverly Hills and later at Spago in Hollywood. Invitations to this party were the most coveted of Oscar night, and Lazar trimmed his guest list with the ruthlessness that Genghis Khan applied to his victims’ heads. Several years ago, as I walked into the Spago party, I watched as an overly buxom starlet posed and preened for snappers outside the restaurant, having been refused entry. She was Anna Nicole Smith, whose life even then seemed like a bit of a train wreck, and now in death seems even more luridly bizarre.

Having toured all over the East Coast of North America for the past four and a half months, I am more than a touch jetlagged, but incredibly impressed with the modernity, beauty and excitement of some of these US cities. Although Toronto is not in the US, it still is to me American in flavour (although I’m sure I’d be lynched there for saying that). In the seven weeks that Legends played there, we stayed in a divine section known as Yorkville. This area has an eclectic selection of chic boutiques, cafés and restaurants to rival St Tropez, Covent Garden and New York City’s Village.