PRESS UPDATE : THE SPECTATOR .. SEPTEMBER 18TH 2026 ..

 

Dolly Par­ton’s mar­riage advice

Iwill miss Dolly Par­ton; one who truly deserves the title of ‘icon’. I met her a few times but the most mem­or­able was in 1984 when I atten­ded the premiere of her movie Rhinestone. I went by myself, which is unusual for me, but I had just told my then hus­band that I wanted a divorce after years of misery and verbal abuse. Dur­ing the red-car­pet ‘trek’ and photo shoot, Dolly noticed I looked a bit tear-stained and asked me if I was OK. When I told her that, des­pite being so unhap­pily mar­ried, it was still hard to adjust to life by myself, Dolly pat­ted me on the shoulder and quipped: ‘Don’t worry, honey, hus­bands are like buses. If you wait long enough another one will come along.’ Dear Dolly, so wise. And in my case, so right.

As this long hot sum­mer comes to a rainy end, I think back to those dog days when even walk­ing brought on a Vic­torian swoon. We were in our house in the south of France for the hor­rible heat of July and August. Dur­ing these months, we had clev­erly invited approx­im­ately 30 or so fam­ily, friends and busi­ness acquaint­ances either to stay for a few days or to visit for lunch or din­ner. We love them all, but after eight solid weeks of break­fast, lunch and din­ner sit-downs, small talk and gos­sip, our heads were swim­ming. Besides, the sound of the cica­das rub­bing their hands together almost drowned out all con­ver­sa­tion, so the phrase ‘What did you say?’ was my most fre­quent con­tri­bu­tion to the pro­ceed­ings. It took a good two weeks to recover, not least from the extreme heat, which frankly I’m not accus­tomed to. Friends say to me: ‘Oh, but you’ve lived in LA for so many years, surely you must be used to the heat?’ The main dif­fer­ence this sum­mer was the tax­ing humid­ity, which saps one’s breath. The con­tin­ental heat we have been exper­i­en­cing is quite unlike the dry Cali­for­nia heat.

Another great icon who just died was Gloria Steinem. Ms Steinem was the lead­ing light of my gen­er­a­tion for women’s rights. She revealed the double stand­ard to which so many women were exposed in the mid-20th cen­tury and made head­lines by going under­cover as a Play­boy ‘bunny’ into Hugh Hefner’s fabled club. His magazine was the ulti­mate guide to exhib­it­ing women in sexu­ally expli­cit pictori­als. ‘Ah, but!’ I hear you say. ‘You, Joan Collins, posed for Play­boy your­self, did you not?’ Yes, I admit I did. But I had com­plete con­trol of the con­tent, I was pho­to­graphed by the legendary George Hur­rell and I was paid a huge amount of money.

For me, com­ing from a gen­er­a­tion of act­resses who were expec­ted to pose for pin-up pho­tos, Gloria’s essay about her time at the Play­boy man­sion and the sexual demands made of the bun­nies, which skir­ted the edge of the law, was a rev­el­a­tion to such a degree that Hefner changed their work­ing con­di­tions. Gloria went on to become a beacon of enlight­en­ment for women’s rights and never ceased to voice how women were used and abused by men. Women today owe Gloria Steinem so much.

I used to love trav­el­ling by plane and I would be filled with excite­ment and anti­cip­a­tion before a trip. Not any more. Today plane travel is hell – even to the con­tin­ent, which used to be so easy. Our last trip from Nice to Heath­row took ten hours, thanks to flight delays, air traffic con­trol­ler issues, red tape and the end­less queues at immig­ra­tion. ‘Take off your hat, your sunglasses, your jew­ellery, your shoes, your coat.’ I half-expec­ted a Peter Sellers Pink Pan­ther moment, where the per­son demand­ing these items would then take them and saunter away with a cheery wave and a ‘thank you’.

And after the Via Cru­cis of secur­ity comes the new cus­toms and immig­ra­tion palaver. Bad enough that you had to have a photo taken sans maquil­lage and with the flush of hav­ing to take off the above ref­er­enced items and put them back on in a hurry because the per­son behind you is breath­ing down your neck. Now you also have to place your fin­gers on an undoubtedly slimy green pad which always gives you a red ‘error’ sig­nal on one of the fin­gers, no mat­ter how much you adjust your hand pres­sure. Not only is this required on arrival, but also on depar­ture. At least in Amer­ica they only do it when you arrive. They couldn’t care less who you are or where you’re going when you leave.