I’m a Londoner born and bred, and I love this city, even though it’s slowly being destroyed by the insidious antics of Sadiq Khan. Do his repeated failures explain why his hair is going prematurely white? Why are the roads closed all the time, for no apparent reason? Why are there endless roadworks, yet no men working on them? Why do we have filthy streets and graffiti everywhere? Visiting Majorca, I was impressed by the pristine streets and pavements of Palma. ‘How come you have no litter or graffiti?’ I asked the driver. ‘Everyone is very proud of our city, and we respect it,’ he replied. ‘No one is allowed to litter or paint graffiti – it is considered a crime – and our citizens shame anyone who does it.’ Are you listening, Sadiq?
Several news outlets are reporting the surge in the dangerous crossings of immigrants coming to our shores, and the cost of giving them succour. But I’m seeing an invasion of a different sort: the proliferation of rental bikes and powered scooters that litter our pavements. I’ve recently been almost run over twice by ‘Lime bikes’. I’ve also tripped over a bunch of discarded cycles on the streets of Belgravia. Everyone I know has experienced the rudeness and sloppiness of most of these bike riders. They seem to care not for road rules, pedestrians, safety, or anyone but themselves. The bikes dart recklessly between vehicles. Moreover, there seem to be an inordinate number of food delivery personnel using these bikes. They are the most dangerous, considering the number of deliveries they must make in a day. The irony is that many of these delivery people are allegedly the same immigrants washing up on our shores and – so I was told – have use of these bikes for free.
Can the most unpopular Prime Minister in living memory resolve these problems? Probably not. How have we arrived at this terrible state of affairs? I have a vague memory as a little girl of my parents talking in hushed tones about how ‘No Nazi will ever be able to cross the Channel and invade us’. My father stalked around the house brandishing a bayonet stained with what looked like dried blood (but was probably rust) from the first world war, announcing he would defend his family from the intruders ‘with my final breath’.
Whenever I hear the grating tones of our Prime Minister rattling on about what he’s going to do for ‘working people’, I cringe. As a working actress filming The Bitter End, a movie about the Duchess of Windsor’s latter days, I woke up every morning between 5.30 and 6.30 to drive to ‘work’ – shooting in Hertfordshire and Ealing studios. When I arrived, everywhere was already a hive of activity as the cast and crew were setting up. I observed daily how incredibly hard actors, film technicians and artisans work in a job that has little or no security, but that they love. Many movie people may be paid good money, but they work extremely punishing schedules – often 14- to 16-hour days – and they may not get another job for several months afterwards. Actors’ careers, unless you are in the 1 per cent of Brads, Toms and Georges, often hang by a thread.
I was delighted when Mike Newell, the film’s director, told me that the brilliantly talented Italian actress Isabella Rossellini had agreed to play opposite me as the Duchess’s nemesis, Suzanne Blum. Isabella embodies the (oft overused and wrongly ascribed) term ‘Hollywood royalty’. Her mother was Ingrid Bergman and her father, Roberto Rossellini, was one of the most innovative and radical film directors of the 1940s and 1950s. Isabella, knowing I had arrived in Hollywood at the end of the Golden Age (when the ‘gilt was beginning to tarnish’ – ha ha!) insisted that I must have met ‘Mama’. ‘Darling, when I arrived in Hollywood, she had already left for Rome to have you,’ I said. ‘But I met your father…’ I showed her a picture I had posted on Instagram
(@joancollinsdbe if you’d like to follow me) of Signor Rossellini and me. ‘Your father was in Jamaica preparing to shoot Sea Wife with Richard Burton and me,’ I said. ‘Wrecked on a desert island, your father insisted on having a love scene between the innocent novice nun – me – and rascally scoundrel Richard Burton. The studio head, Darryl F. Zanuck, agreed, but the censor staunchly refused, so your father left the island and returned to Rome and my chance to work with him sadly ended in the sand.’
On the final day of shooting, Isabella and I had to film the denouement – a furious angry scene in which I berated her. Staring intently into her eyes as I delivered venomous vituperations, I was suddenly disturbed by the realisation that I was telling Ingrid Bergman’s daughter to bugger off.
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