'I need you plunger, Percy' barked Dame Joan Collins... we all fell about laughing
Sunday, May 16
Dame Joan Collins has returned to Britain to do my Life Stories show after spending most of this latest lockdown in Los Angeles.
‘Just to warn you,’ announced the nation’s most dynamic octogenarian on arrival for our reunion dinner at Ivy Chelsea Garden, ‘I’ve been locked up in quarantine for five days so feel like a caged animal who just got released.’
To prove the point, she promptly barked at her husband across the table: ‘PERCY, I NEED YOUR PLUNGER!’
‘Blimey,’ I sniggered, ‘it’s a little early in proceedings for that isn’t it, Dame Joan?’
All eyes turned to a bemused Percy.
‘You need my WHAT, darling?’ he replied.
‘YOUR PLUNGER!’ Joan repeated, louder. ‘URGENTLY!’
By now, I was cackling like Sid James in Carry On Camping after Barbara Windsor’s bikini top flew off.
‘What’s so funny?’ asked Joan. ‘When Percy plunges it in, everything fires up again.’
Now everyone was falling about laughing, and the penny finally dropped with the jet-lagged legend. ‘You have very dirty minds, it’s a special charger for my phone!’
Joan revealed she and Percy have been phoned 14 times by NHS Test-and-Trace checkers in the five days since they returned to make sure they’re keeping to the rules.
I’m delighted to learn we finally appear to have a system that actually works, but it begs the question as to why the hell we didn’t have one ready to go before the pandemic struck, as many Asian countries did after previous scares like the SARS epidemic?
It would have saved so many thousands of lives.
Joan’s doing Life Stories for the second time to celebrate her 70th year in the movie industry. ‘How many feature films have you made?’ I asked. ‘74.’
‘I’ve only been in eight,’ I replied, ‘but they’ve grossed over $2 billion at the box office.’ ‘I don’t believe it!’ exclaimed an incredulous Joan. ‘Name them.’
‘The Campaign with Will Ferrell, Flight with Denzel Washington, The Criminal with Kevin Costner, One Chance with James Corden, World War Z with Brad Pitt, Men In Black International with Liam Neeson, Entourage with Jeremy Piven and the Edward Snowden documentary Citizenfour.’
The table fell into stunned silence as the full glory of my Hollywood body of work hit home. ‘What’s YOUR cumulative gross, Joan?’ I chuckled.
‘Not as much as that!’ she retorted, ‘but you’ve always been a lot grosser than me.’
Joan was adamant she won’t cry during Thursday’s recording. ‘I’m too tough,’ she insisted. ‘You’ll never crack me.’
Five minutes later, she instantly welled up when I mentioned something that’s happened since her first Life Stories appearance 11 years ago. ‘Damn, you’ve got me going already. Stop it.’
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