Hollywood, fist-fights and getting cancelled: Joan Collins and Taki in conversation

Introductions

Scene: a drawing room in London.

When the recording starts, Taki is already mid-anecdote…

Taki: … I was sent out to Monte Carlo to speak to Roger Moore. The Spectator offered to pay all my expenses. I said thank you, I’ll pay my own. I went and had a terrific drunken dinner with Roger who really spilled the beans, cos we were buddies. I came back. The tape was empty because I’d never turned the recorder on.

Joan: I’d known Roger since I was 15, because my father was a big agent in London and I came back from school — oh, 14 actually, because I left school at 15 — and there’s the most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen standing there. He came over and said: ‘How do you do? You must be Joan, my name is Roger Moore.’ And I said: ‘Hello, how are you? What’s that screeching in the background from Daddy’s office?’ And he said: ‘Oh that’s my wife. Your father’s trying to get her to go on tour and she doesn’t want to do it.’ Her name was Dorothy Squires, who you might’ve known.

Taki: Of course!

Joan: Famous for being rather loudmouthed, let us say.

Taki: The third wife, Luisa — she and I became friends. She spoke no language but Italian. One day after I came out of Pentonville University, Bill Buckley had rented the Château de Rougemont — an 18th-/17th-century château — to give a party for me, so I arrived there and Roger and Luisa were coming out of the car. Luisa in a loud voice said: ‘Roger, Roger, è questo, chi uscito di prigione [that’s the man who just came out of prison].’ Roger turned around to shush her and he hit his head on this enormous gate and knocked himself out.