Another hot date with Jackie Collins

By Hannah Stephenson

Published:

JACKIE Collins’s publicist looks tired – very tired. He may be a good 30 years younger than the queen of the raunchy read, but he can’t keep up with her energy levels.

They were out last night until the early hours, he confesses, and have done nothing but eat, drink (in moderation), promote and sign copies of her new blockbuster, Married Lovers, since she landed on British soil from her home in Hollywood almost a month ago.

Yet Jackie opens the door of her palatial suite at the famous Dorchester Hotel in London looking as fresh as a daisy, dressed in elegant black with an apple-green jacket, long auburn hair and full make-up, her deep dark eyes accentuated with impossibly long false lashes and a thick wedge of eyeliner.

She doesn’t need to promote her racy books because they sell by the bucket-load – more than 400million since her first novel, The World Is Full Of Married Men, was published in 1968. Translated into 20 languages, none has ever been out of print.

Yet Jackie, who I am assured is 68, has so much energy that she loves to go out and meet the fans. Before arriving in London, she had visited Dublin and Moscow. Earlier this year, she toured 26 cities in the US over two months on her own tour bus.

“I was like a rock star, it was fantastic,” she enthuses.

“Life is such an adventure.”

Jackie has lived in Beverly Hills for more than 20 years and must have a contacts book to die for. Her neighbours include Al Pacino and she hosts one big party a year – the last one was a birthday bash for her pal, Sir Michael Caine, with guests including Scarlett Johansson, Hugh Jackman, Pacino, Jack Nicholson, Sidney Poitier and Quincy Jones.

“I go out too much, for research purposes, you understand. But I am a social bunny,” she laughs.

The characters in her books always have gloriously glamorous names, from Lucky Santangelo, Red Diamond, Michael Scorsinni and Santino Bonnatti to her latest heroine, Cameron Paradise, but they are not quite as far-fetched as they sound. Indeed, she bases many of them on people she knows, although she’s far too much of a Hollywood player to reveal who.

Jackie’s zest for life makes her great fun to be with. She knows all the latest gossip on who’s dating who, what’s happening in the world of celebrity marriages and which powerful predators in Tinseltown are making their moves. She expands on those seeds of information in her books.

She has long since earned her right to thumb her nose at the many literary snobs who dismiss her work as trash. More literary writers, after all, don’t have as many fans – and in its first week of publication, Married Lovers was straight in at number three in the bestselling list.

With her latest book tour nearly at an end, Jackie says she can’t wait to get back home so she can lounge around in track-suit bottoms wearing no make-up.

On her return to LA, she will continue work on her next novel, Poor Little Bitch Girl, and is planning a book of her photographs called Jackie Collins’s Hollywood.

“I live on my own now and I love every moment of it,” she reflects.

“I’ve been married all my life and it’s kind of a revelation living by yourself. If I want to write or watch a movie at 2am, I can. I don’t have to answer to anybody.

“I have several boyfriends,” she laughs.

“I have a man for every occasion. I live my life like a bachelor.”

Married Lovers, by Jackie Collins, is published by Simon & Schuster, priced £17.99.