EVENT UPDATE : THE SHOOTING STAR CHILDREN'S HOSPICES 20TH ANNIVERSARY BALL.. THE ROYAL LANCASTER ... LONDON.. NOVEMBER 23RD 2024 ..

Stars aligned to celebrate 20 years of The Shooting Star Ball...

A host of stars joined 350 guests on Saturday 23 November to show their support for The Shooting Star Ball, which was celebrating its 20th year, in aid of Shooting Star Children’s Hospices.

The annual event took place at The Royal Lancaster Hotel and was hosted by TV and stage star Brian Conley. Guests were entertained by a fantastic performance from Vice-President Tony Hadley MBE and his band, which included a special duet with Julie Forsyth, whose father Sir Bruce Forsyth was the first person to host an event for the charity.

Tony also took to the stage earlier in the evening, together with Vice-President Dame Joan Collins DBE, to share how much the charity means to them. Also showing their support on the night were Patrons Lauren Silverman and Laurence and Jackie Llewelyn-Bowen. Celebrity guests included Elizabeth and Damian Hurley, Julian Clary, Leigh Francis, Brenda Blethyn, Don Black, Dame Maureen Lipman and Dutch sensations Rene and Natasja Froger.

Guests enjoyed a three-course ‘winter warmer’ dinner, before taking part in a money-can’t-buy auction hosted by auctioneer Charlie Ross. Auction prizes included some incredible prizes donated by VP’s Simon Cowell, Dame Joan Collins and Tony Hadley, plus a brand new Mini.

Fabulous Gown Donated By Joan from A recent Harpers Bazaar Shoot

Karen Sugarman MBE, Executive Vice-President of Shooting Star Children’s Hospices said, “The Shooting Star Ball is always a very special evening where we are able to come together to raise vital funds for the families who need our support. This year is all the more special as we celebrate its 20th year. We are so thrilled and overwhelmed with the generosity of every single guest. Without whom, we simply would not be able to provide the vital care to children and families facing unimaginable circumstances.”

Paul Farthing, Chief Executive of Shooting Star Children’s Hospices said, “The Shooting Star Ball is a fantastic celebration of the incredible team at Shooting Star Children’s Hospices and the vital work we deliver. Thanks to those for their support over the past 20 years and their continued support looking ahead, to help us to reach our ambition of supporting every family with a life-limited child or whose child has died, when they need us.”

 

COMING SOON: A MURDER BETWEEN FRIENDS .. TRAILER... COMING 2025!

Here is a first look at the trailer for Joan's exciting new film 'A Murder Between Friends' coming in 2025 .. Watch this space!

EVENT UPDATE : BISHOPSGATE PLAZA / PAN PACIFIC HOTEL CHRISTMAS LIGHT SWITCH ON... LONDON... NOVEMBER 14TH 2024 ..

 
Joan provided the glamour and sparkle to Bishopsgate Plaza as she switched on the lights on London's tallest Christmas Tree. 

A massive 67 foot sustainable Christmas tree – the tallest in London – will be the latest edition to the iconic City skyline when it is unveiled next month as part of the Eastern City Business Improvement District’s Festival of Light Campaign.

The “Eastern Cit-Tree” will be erected outside the Pan Pacific Hotel London, with a global Film and TV celebrity switching on the lights on November 14th in front of a Dickensian choir and stilt walkers. The tree, made of 65,000 sparkling lights and over 800 red and gold baubles, has been created by The Christmas Decorators – a company committed to sustainability which has earned them the Carbon Footprint Standard, therefore contributing to a greener, sustainable future.

This is just one of the creative and ambitious programme of activities sponsored by the Eastern City BID to help both workers and visitors alike enjoy the iconic area during this period. Working again with Festival.Org, which collaborated with the Eastern City BID to bring the iconic Arcs in 2023 and Bubbles in 2024, we are delighted to reveal IMPULSE – an interactive sound and light playground made up of six see-saws that respond to the riders’ movements.

EVENT ALERT : FESTIVAL OF LIGHT CHRISTMAS TREE LIGHTING CEREMONY... BISHOPSGATE PLAZA / PAN PACIFIC HOTEL LONDON.. NOVEMBER 14TH 2024 ..

 

Eastern City Lights Up The Streets With Londons Tallest Christmas Tree

A massive 67 foot Christmas tree – the tallest in London – will be the latest edition to the iconic City skyline when it is unveiled next month as part of the Eastern City Business Improvement District’s Festival of Light Campaign.

Members of the Bishopsgate community are invited to join us on 14th November 5-6pm at Bishopsgate Plaza in front of Pan Pacific London hotel where Dame Joan Collins will switch on the lights

The Eastern City tree will be erected outside the Pan Pacific London hotel, with a global Film and TV celebrity switching on the lights on November 14th in front of a Dickensian choir and stilt walkers. The tree, made of 65,000 LED sparkling lights and over 800 red and gold baubles, has been created by The Christmas Decorators – a company committed to sustainability which has earned them the Carbon Footprint Standard, therefore contributing to a greener, sustainable future.

This is just one of the creative and ambitious programme of activities sponsored by the Eastern City BID to help both workers and visitors alike enjoy the iconic area during this period. Working again with Festival.Org, which collaborated with the Eastern City BID to bring the iconic Arcs in 2023 and Bubbles in 2024, we are delighted to reveal IMPULSE – an interactive sound and light playground made up of six see-saws that respond to the riders’ movements.

A City of London premier, Impulse is an invitation to play, laugh and transform when put into motion by people, augmented by LED lights and ambient sounds. When not in use, the see-saws will stabilise to the horizontal position and move to a low glowing level. Installed on 2nd December until 15th December, this is guaranteed to bring light and joy through the dark months.

In addition to this, Hive Curates will bring us the City Light Festival which will illuminate iconic areas of the City, including the Lloyds of London building. These playful and unexpected light interventions will bring awe and wonder to the streets, curtesy of especially commissioned artists.

The Light Festival will start on 2nd December.

The BID has also sponsored Christmas trees in the churches of St Helen’s, St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate and St Mary Abchurch, as well as organising traditional Christmas workshops such as wreath and candle making and bauble workshops.

Kate Hart, Chief Executive of the Eastern City BID, said:

“We are incredibly proud to be a trail blazer in our area and bring these festive firsts, which are imaginative, decorative and distinctive. This is a community that drives change – both with new ideas but in perception too. These activations are designed to draw a different visitor, while enhancing the public spaces for our workers and visitors alike.

The Festival of Light campaign draws on the recommendations in our Public Realm Vision launched earlier this year, improving and enhancing the public spaces which are often seen as dark, dreary and unwelcoming. And every event is free for all. The BID is in a unique position as an enabler to bring artists, creatives and businesses together to showcase something the whole area can enjoy and in addition shine a light – literally – on their amazing projects and installations.”

Nick Bolton, CEO of The Christmas Decorators, said:

“We are delighted to be asked to provide such an iconic tree to the City of London. We are quite particular about what new work we undertake as our schedule is always bursting at the seams. However, when we heard about the ambition for this record-breaking tree by the Eastern City BID, we were honoured to put forward our proposal. It’s been
fun for the team to build and even more fun as the installation date finally arrives.”

Guillaume Aniorté, Managing Director of QDSinternational, said:

“We are absolutely delighted that Impulse by Lateral Office and CS Design will light up London’s dynamic Eastern City this winter for a magical and festive fortnight. Londoners of all ages are invited to tap into joy and playfulness with a ride on a series of larger- than-life seesaws that will transform an exciting corner of the city into a playground of light, sound and wonder.”

PRESS UPDATE : THE SPECTATOR ... NOVEMBER 7TH 2024 ...

 Joan Collins

The Night I Was Turned Away From The Ivy!

Joan at The Ivy in 2015

How the mighty can fall. I was overwhelmed by the approbation I had received for my one-woman show, Behind the Shoulder Pads at the Adelphi Theatre. Standing ovations would erupt several times during our performance. The roar of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowd were heady as my co-star (my hubby Percy) and I took our bows to wild applause and cheering. At the after-party at Rules, the oldest and most revered restaurant in London, we were inundated with admiration and support from everybody there. Two nights later, still glowing from all the attention, Percy, my daughter Katy and I went to the Curzon Cinema in Victoria, our first visit to a big screen for six months. Percy had booked the Ivy Victoria for between 7.45 and 8 p.m., informing them that it would be ‘after the movie ended’. We showed up a few minutes before eight to be greeted firstly by a look of ‘Who the hell are you?’ followed by a reproving: ‘You’re very late so we don’t have a table for you now.’ While Percy cajoled and entreated with various hostesses, managers and waiters, Katy and I slunk to the bar trying to ignore the amused expressions of the seated diners. After a highly embarrassing and frustrating ten minutes we left, caught a cab to the ever-welcoming Frantoio where we enjoyed a first-rate repast, great service and appreciation for our patronage. As I’ve been going to the original Ivy in West Street since I was 16, that brought me down a peg or two.

The movie we saw was The Apprentice. It was a fascinating look at Donald Trump’s rise from a 27-year-old innocent-looking builder to a 42-year-old titan of industry. He was portrayed magnificently by Sebastian Stan but not as a caricature. The man who was his mentor and taught him all he knew about winning was one Roy Cohn, a creepy tiny creature brilliantly played by Jeremy Strong. It was an enjoyable film, with a fascinating narrative, a beginning, a middle, and an end, unlike too many of the recent offerings. I like to be entertained when I go to the cinema, not lectured at or ‘disturbed’ and come out feeling that I’ve wasted a couple of hours on some woke nonsense. But I had to laugh at the trailers offering a promotion for ‘dog day afternoons’, where your canine friend can sit on your lap and enjoy the movie with you, saliva running like the Orinoco and celebrating that this world has finally ‘gone to the dogs’.

It’s distressing that the morbid language from this new government about our economic future has caused so many wealthy individuals to up sticks and jet off to greener pastures, leaving charities with their own ‘black holes’. I am a patron of Shooting Star Hospices for children with end-of-life conditions, and we have lost so many wealthy supporters we are struggling to sell enough tables for our 20th anniversary gala and auction, so crucial to our funding, on 23 November. There’s still time for a donation, Lord Alli… you’re the only one left!

Joan at Shooting Star Ball in 2022

Thinking about government payouts, and pensions, I started working at age 16 for £3.10 a week as a trainee in the Maidstone Repertory Company. I was an assistant-assistant stage manager, an assistant-assistant prop master and prompter, and I understudied the role of the ‘maid’ in just about every play written by western dramatists. It was regularly a 15-hour day, six days a week, but I learned so much from watching those brilliant rep actors hone their craft and it’s sad to realise repertory companies no longer exist. And as a bonus for my efforts, my father made me sign up for national insurance. I proudly paid my dues working on stage and in films and TV (Yes, Keir, acting is ‘work’). But when the time came to receive my pension, the DWP had no record of me! Yes, Joan Collins does not exist in their books, nor does Joan Reed or Joan Newley or Joan Kass, so I’ve never received a penny from the government, much less the winter fuel allowance. I hear you say: ‘Oh, but look what you receive from Dynasty reruns!’ The answer is nada, zilch, rien. The cast of Dynasty are not lucky recipients of major residuals like the actors from Friends, so the alumni are still jobbing actors.

I'm scared of AI. I know we must move with the times but there are so many aspects I find truly horrifying. Videos of tiny toddlers wearing the most bizarre costumes while carrying weird animals strutting down a fashion runway with smug expressions on their baby faces keep popping up on my Instagram feed. I know that AI can perfectly replicate voices, evinced by the rebirth of Michael Parkinson’s interviews, and developers can also create facial likenesses, although apparently AI is prevented from creating an exact replica of anybody’s face – thank goodness for small mercies. Percy experimented recently, asking the AI bot to generate a picture of me. The result was a hybrid version of Anita Dobson and Shirley Ballas.

Written by

Joan Collins

COMING SOON : A MURDER BETWEEN FRIENDS ... COMING 2025 FROM ARTISTS VIEW ENTERTAINMENT ..

 Here is a first look at the poster for Joan's latest film release 'A Murder Between Friends' which is due for release in early 2025..

Watch this space!

A Murder Between Friends

Director: Jacob Young

Writer: Mark Rozzano

Cast: Joan Collins, Jacob Young, Toby-Alexander Smith, Nadia Bjorlin , Simon Cotton, India Thain, Hana Vagnerova, Jim Borstelmann, Espen Hatleskog

Release Date: 2025

Genre: Thriller

Synopsis: When a group of friends decide to escape the city for an impromptu reunion, they lease a magnificent castle owned by a legendary television detective. What begins as a fun-filled getaway takes a dark turn when one of the guests is found dead under mysterious circumstances. As tensions rise and secrets are uncovered, each guest becomes a suspect, compelling the famed sleuth, played by the acclaimed Joan Collins, to unravel the clues of a genuine murder mystery.

PRESS UPDATE : THE LONDON STANDARD .. OCTOBER 17TH 2024 ..

Dame Joan Collins on Brexit, divorce and being 'a really good diva'

As she launches a new stage show at the Adelphi Theatre, Nick Curtis meets the Dynasty diva to hear what she really thinks about everything from the US election, to taxes, to desire..

By 

Nick Curtis @nickcurtis

“I won’t have a glass of wine because if I do I’ll tell you anything,” says Dame Joan Collins, settling into a quiet table at Olivio in Elizabeth Street. Even without the lubrication of alcohol this great dame, the Dynasty diva with a nine-decade acting career, proves deliciously indiscreet on subjects ranging from Brexit to the US election to her five husbands.

She’s  hates being defined by age, and in her last memoir, Behind the Shoulder Pads, listed the ages of all the journalists vulgar enough to bring it up (I’m 58, Joan, for the next volume). She’s in her “uniform”, a 10-year-old Erdem dress (“I used to love him but he changed his style”), a white jacket she designed herself and a hat “bought for $10 in an American supermarket” — she has homes in LA and St Tropez as well as Belgravia. Smaller than I expected from her regal image, she has good skin, a level, green-eyed gaze, a deliciously wry smile and a quick wit.

An example. I ask her if she regrets anything and she says, “Three ... no, two dreadful marriages. My first one, when I was 18 [to actor Maxwell Reed] and my last one to Peter Holm.” The pop singer and playboy was her penultimate spouse, before her current union with Percy Gibson, 32 years her junior, who she married in 2002.

“I don’t regret Tony [writer and actor Anthony Newley] and Ron [Kass, a businessman] because I had children with them,” she says of husbands two and three. “And sadly, they’re all dead now.” Holm is still alive, I say. “Is he?” she retorts with immaculate uninterest. “I don’t follow his fortunes. Michael Caine used to call him ‘the Swedish comedian’.” She, Caine and his wife Shakira meet for dinner “every two weeks or so”, and I sense she’s slightly miffed that her cockney contemporary has started writing novels, a field Joan followed her sister Jackie into.

Dame Joan wears Miss Sohee silk cape, price upon request; gold Korean butterfly choker, price upon request; missohee.com. Merola clip on earrings; merola.co.uk

Dan Kennedy, shot at Claridge's

“I think I might write another book,” she says airily. “I’ve done 19.” Initially she says she won’t talk about politics before jumping in with both feet. As a current affairs obsessive who takes five newspapers and devours TV bulletins, she’s glued to the American presidential election. “There’s a lot of sneering going on. I’m glad I don’t have to vote. I don’t know who’s lying. I would like to see a woman president, which is not to say I’d like it to be Kamala Harris. We’ve already had a black president and I thought he was good. America is in a pretty bad state. But then again, so is Britain.”

Roadworks and reckless pavement cyclists annoy her in London but her real ire is reserved for Sir Keir Starmer’s withdrawal of the winter fuel allowance. “I think it’s a total, total, total outrage what they’re doing to pensioners. These are people of my generation, and even older and younger, people between 60 and 100 let’s say, who have saved, like I have saved. I have three homes, but nobody’s ever given me anything. No husband has ever given me anything: they’ve taken from me.” On Brexit she says: “I did vote for it and now I don’t know whether it’s good or bad. I do know that I can only spend 90 days in the South of France now and we get taxed on our home there.”

She didn’t rate Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss or Theresa May but “I am a Tory. Everyone knows that. I was a huge fan of Mrs Thatcher. I cannot believe that Starmer took down her portrait. I think that’s an insult.” She gives a self-reproving peal of laughter. “What am I saying? I’m never going to be invited to Chequers! Not that I ever was by Sunak. The only person who ever invited me to Chequers was Tony Blair. I liked Blair. He told me he wanted to be an actor. I said, you’d have been a great one.”

She retains a fondness for Boris Johnson, who encouraged her to write for The Spectator when he was editor, and she is shocked to hear the magazine has been sold. “Really? To English people I hope.” I tell her the buyer is Paul Marshall, the co-owner of GB News. “Oh, I don’t watch that very much,” she says with lofty disdain. “I watch Jeremy Vine, who I love. And Loose Women. I watch a lot of news and sometimes I’ll just put MTV on: I can’t bear a black screen.”

We’ve met to talk about her stage show, also called Behind the Shoulder Pads, which comes to the Adelphi on October 22. MC-ed by her husband Percy, it opens with a film montage of everyone from Oprah Winfrey to Johnny Carson introducing her.

“Then I come on, I say something witty, like ‘I’m Joan Collins’, and I launch into my life story, making it as amusing and interesting as I can, because everybody’s heard it a billion times.” After a break and a change into a new Amanda Wakeley or Jenny Packham gown there’s a Q&A with the audience. What’s the most surprising thing she’s been asked? “How do you put your false eyelashes on? And I said, I don’t wear false eyelashes any more. I don’t even wear mascara or eyeliner. They’ll ask about Dynasty, about the actors I worked with like John Gielgud, Nigel Hawthorne and Paul Newman. And they’ll often ask who was the best kisser.” And who was? “Paul Newman, of course,”

Hers is an extraordinary life and career. She was born in Bayswater in 1933 and had a strict upbringing in Maida Vale by parents she adored, her father an authoritarian Jewish South African theatrical agent, her mother a dance teacher who taught her always to exercise, keep the sun off her face and “always leave something on my plate”. (She doesn’t finish her starter portion of ravioli today.) Her mother died at 52 of breast cancer, the same disease that later claimed her younger sister Jackie: she has a younger brother, Bill, and a half-sister, Natasha, from her father’s second marriage.

Dame Joan wears Elie Saab blazer, £1,600, trousers, £975; Elie Saab Bruton Street. Helen Moore bespoke faux fur stole, £139; helenmoore.com

Dan Kennedy, shot at Claridge's

Young Joan wanted to be a clothes designer or a stage actress: at 16 she went to Rada and at 17 was signed to the Rank Organisation as a starlet quickly dubbed “Britain’s bad girl.” Maxwell Reed, she revealed in an earlier autobiography, drugged and raped her on their first date and she married him in 1952 out of “shame”. They were already divorcing when 20th Century Fox flew her out to LA in 1954 with a seven-year contract.

“It’s seven years because, you know, a woman of 27 has lost her allure and become an OLD PERSON,” she snorts. “But it was terribly daunting. I was only 20: my mother couldn’t come with me as she was ill and my sister was too young. They [Fox] found me an apartment, hired me a car, got me an agent and a financial adviser who ended up screwing me blind. Figuratively, that is.”

One boyfriend, Sydney Chaplin (“Charlie’s son”) introduced her to a social circle including Gene Kelly: another, Warren Beatty, got her pregnant and she had an abortion for the sake of both their careers. “The last time I saw him, he was going into some event with Annette [Bening, his wife], and he said to Percy, ‘I still love this woman.’ Ridiculous.” She made scores of films, but shortly after appearing with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby in The Road to Hong Kong in 1962, “I met Tony Newley and started having babies.”

Following the birth of Tara in 1963 and Sacha in 1965, the marriage ended in 1970 after Newley detailed his infidelities in the musical Can Heironymus Merkin Ever

Forgive Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness? After a fitful decade, including a guest spot on Star Trek in 1967, her acting career cranked up again with a handful of horror films, comedies and thrillers in the 1970s. “I’ve done some really crappy films, Nick, but that’s the profession,” she says. “If you’re a baker you don’t always bake the perfect loaf. And I was the breadwinner in my family for many years.”

She had met Ron Kass, head of Apple Records and later Warner Bros Records UK, in 1969 and married him in 1972. Their daughter Katyana, known as Katy, was born the same year and in 1980 was seriously injured in a car crash. This happened after her mother’s second coming as a softcore sex symbol in The Stud (1978) and The Bitch (1979) adapted from her sister Jackie’s bonkbusters. She and Kass divorced in 1983 and he died in 1986: in her book, she says Dodi Fayed, who was living in their Chelsea basement, got Kass addicted to cocaine. “I don’t like to talk about Ron, because I’m very close to Katy ...” she tails off. “I just don’t talk about their [her children’s] fathers.”

From 1981 to 1989 she played Alexis, the glamorous, scheming first wife of John Forsythe’s Blake Carrington, in Aaron Spelling’s American mega-soap Dynasty, and it’s the only thing she still watches herself in today. “It’s a fantastic show with wonderful actors, all looking great, beautifully shot, with incredible clothes and a very, very good narrative. During Covid there was nothing to watch, and Percy and I found this big box set I’d never opened: half of the shows I’d never seen, because I always came back to England during hiatus, and that’s when they were screened.

“But boy did they push me around,” she continues. “They suspended me and refused to give me a raise even though I was extremely popular and on every magazine cover. So in the end I said, ‘Screw you’, and didn’t go back for season five. Eventually they came back and gave me a small raise, but it still had to be less than John Forsythe got.” She wreaked some small revenge, though. “I stole a lot from Dynasty. I couldn’t steal the clothes, so I took the costume jewellery. I hope Candy Spelling [Aaron’s widow] doesn’t read this. She’ll want them back.”

Through the Nineties she took occasional film roles but also returned to her first love, theatre. The company manager on a 2000 US tour of the play Love Letters she did was one Percy Gibson. They fell in love, despite the age difference. “If he dies, he dies,” she memorably quipped when guest-hosting Have I Got News for You. “We have the same blood group,” she says when I ask the secret of their relationship. “He’s just a wonderful man. He is kind, thoughtful, funny, the most caring person, a take-charge guy and a gentleman — of which there ain’t too many around today. We play very competitive poker and Scrabble and he loves and takes care of my children.”

She’s still a “jobbing actress”, appearing in American Horror Story and trying to get a film about Wallis Simpson’s last years off the ground. “But I’m very happy not to work. I have a wonderful life. I have a great husband. Terrific friends, great children.” She also has four grandchildren, who keep her au fait with social media. Collins runs her own Instagram account. “I’ve got over half a million followers, which is pathetic compared to influencers” — she almost spits the word — “but pretty good for someone like me.”

She enjoys eating out and visiting the cinema and the theatre, most recently taking in Fawlty Towers the Play and Sir Ian McKellen’s film The Critic. She thinks most fashion today is “bleurgh” but loves a trawl through the Oxford Street M&S. She credits her upbringing for the fact she never went broke or off the rails on drink or drugs (“look at Matthew Perry”) and has remained “normal”. Claridge’s in Mayfair is known to be one of her favourite places, marrying Percy Gibson there in 2002.

“When people talk to me they say, ‘Oh, Joan, you’re so normal.’ Which I am. All this diva shit that people throw on me, that’s from the characters that I played.” She flashes her smile again: “I do give really good diva. On stage I diva it to death.”

Joan Collins: Behind the Shoulder Pads is at the Adelphi Theatre on October 22; lwtheatres.co.uk

Styled by Arabella Boyce. Make-up and hair by Alyn Waterman using Charlotte Tilbury. Photographer’s assistant: Patricia Benitez. Dresser: Chrissy Maddison. Photographed at Claridge’s. Special thanks to @alexsilverpr