Joan Collins

Speaker 20:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 20:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty nine.

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And the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:28

My Castaway this week is a superstar of the small screen. She has always been famous. Chosen as a starlet by the Rank Film Organization in the fifties, she went on to Hollywood, where in a succession of seductive and voluptuous roles she worked alongside actors such as Gregory Peck, Jack Hawkins, and Richard Burton. And then, seven years ago, she was cast as the arch villainess of soap, Alexis Carrington, in Dynasty, a role which has brought her worldwide fame. She says she's a born survivor, and indeed Alexis may or may not be dead, but Joan Collins goes on.

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How is life after Alexis Joan? Do you miss her?

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I don't miss those early morning calls, I must say, but um it's like a person who is a sort of long lost cousin or something. You sort of miss her when you think about it, but you don't when she's not around. Has it also met an end to all that travelling backwards and forwards across the Atlantic, or are you still doing that? Well, I do have a slight touch of travel mania. Um I'm a born gypsy and I've always been told that I must have lived in forty

Presenter1:34

or fifty different houses and flats. And I always make, wherever I am, a sort of home, kind of a nesting instinct, even if it's only a motel room for one night or a suite at a hotel for three or four. I I make I I bring my own things. I have lots of books and

Presenter1:52

Photographs and records obviously. And you unpack everything and put it all away in the drawers, even if you're only staying for the night, do you? Uh, not quite. I hate unpacking and packing. I usually get somebody to do it. You see, it's quite

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So what sort of home are you going to make on the desert island, do you think?

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Well, since I'm absolutely hopeless with my hands, I have a feeling I won't survive for very long until some sort of Robinson Crusoe type comes along to rescue me. Are you not practical at all? You must be. No, I'm not practical at all in that kind of way. I'm practical much more with my mind, but I'm completely hopeless. I do not belong in the electronic society. I can't even work an oven because I find it all terribly complicated. And those signals that things have on are meaningless. Things that flash at you. So actually I probably would do better on a desert island because it's just s simplicity. But could you hunt and could you kill?

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No, I didn't think I could kill.

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And I couldn't hunt, but I could um

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I wouldn't care about eating meat and and fish because I would climb a tree and get some berries or open a coconut and since I prefer that kind of food I'm I don't eat meat very much anyway. I would probably try and catch a fish but since I'm allergic to shellfish I w have to stay away from crab and lobster. And the music, how important would that be to help you? Oh, terribly important. I mean I would probably have it on all the time although I would love to listen to the sound of the sea.

Presenter3:16

But um when I wasn't listening to that I would play one of my wonderful eight records. So what's the first one? I'd like to hear one of those wonderful Neapolitan songs that Luciana Pavarotti sings, maybe Torna Sorriento, which I love, because I think it's the sort of thing you could stand on a beach and the sound would just

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fill you with joy.

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Uh

Joan Collins3:59

Aguara la Gua quiestucharadio asienti siesti chur grande nor proci.

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But

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Ah

Joan Collins4:33

Uh

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Torna al Suriento, sung by Luciano Peverotti with the National Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Gian Carlo Chiaramello. What did you want to be when when you were little?

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Well, when I was little I had a bunch of things I wanted to be. I was quite addicted to a programme on television called Dick Barton's Special Agent.

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And um I decided I had

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Had to be a detective and perhaps get on Dick's team with Jock and Snowy. And I got a detective kit and used to go around fingerprinting people all over the house. I thought that would be amusing. But then I realized that perhaps I wasn't cut out for that physically. I might not fade into the background. But my big love had always been movies and theatre. And the more that I went to the theatre, the more I wanted decided I wanted to be an actress. And by the time I was about

Presenter5:26

Nine. I I'd really thought that that was the number one. Which is not surprising, because your your father was in show business, wasn't he? I mean, he was a theatrical agent. Yes, my whole family was in show business. My daddy was an an agent, and his mother was a dancer at the turn of the century with a group called the Three Cape Girls. They used to do the can-can around the Capes in South Africa. And my two aunts were also dancers with Jack Buchanan and his young ladies. So I I was brought up in that sort of theatrical atmosphere. But it was more variety than legit. This was in London, you lived. What was your mother's role in all of this? Was she glamorous and glitzy?

Joan Collins6:02

Yes.

Presenter6:07

Mummy was very um beautiful.

Presenter6:10

and um loved clothes and loved very nice pretty things. But she wasn't glitzy. She was glamorous and she was very much of a mother. She wasn't interested in anything at all other than her husband and her three children and running her home as well as she possibly could. And um and she was a very good role model in some ways. Of course I I didn't follow it.

Presenter6:34

Yes, I gather I read that she was very good at ironing. Well, she yes, she didn't like it very much, but she was she was good at everything she did in terms of being a homemaker. Wonderful.

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What sort of little girl were you then surrounded by all of this? Were you very spoilt by all these theatrical folk who came by? I spent a great deal of time, and I think that's where my gipsy existence comes from, being evacuated from

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as far back as I can remember.

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To various places like Devon and Ilfracum and Chichester, Bogner, Brighton. So I don't really think I was spoiled, as any children were in that age. We weren't spoiled. We didn't have sweets. We hardly ever had any fruit. We were lucky to have sugar in milk. So I grew up eating everything on my plate, which I still do. The constant battle of the bulge. We'll talk about that later. Shall we have another record? Yes.

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Talking about those years during the war, there's one particular record that epitomizes that, and that is, of course, Vera Lynn.

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Singing We'll Meet Again, and that reminds me of my baby in childhood.

Joan Collins7:48

Meet again.

Joan Collins7:50

Don't know where

Joan Collins7:53

Don't know when

Presenter7:53

No

Joan Collins7:56

But I know we'll meet again.

Joan Collins8:00

Some sunny day

Joan Collins8:06

Keep smiling through

Presenter8:10

Virulin, singing We'll Meet Again. You were very much your father's girl then, Joan, were you?

Presenter8:17

Well, I think so. There was that thing that little girls have in Anglo Saxon countries of always trying to get the love of the father, and the father being rather distant, aloof, strict.

Presenter8:28

Patriarchal figure. You even at one point, did you not try to be a boy, try to be for him the son he'd never had.

Presenter8:35

Yes, they wanted a son very much. There was me and then there was Jackie, and um Daddy used to love to go to football games, Arsenal being his particular favourite.

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And so I used to go along to these games at the age of eleven or twelve and sort of wrapped in a scarf, waving a ratchet, freezing cold, bored to tears, but thinking that he would really approve of me for doing that.

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I don't really think so. I think s shortly after that my brother was born and so everything changed. Could you ever please, you know, did he ever turn around at any point in your life and say, you know, you're really clever, you're really pretty, I think you're terrific?

Presenter9:11

I he wasn't that sort of a man. He was one of those men that are just very not cold necessarily, but not loving and emotional. And it was always considered um just not the done thing to uh to give people compliments. It was uh the same with with most of my friends. They and but we didn't in those days and I still don't over it, I don't sit around analysing and and getting terribly analytical about my life. I find that a very American thing that I

Presenter9:39

That um I've never really been able to do. I just sort of get on with it. People inev inevitably do it for you though, don't they? I mean the pop psychologists would say that that's what you'd been looking for in your husbands ever since, that you'd been looking for this father figure who would be warm where your father had been cold. Oh, yes, but pop psychology has got an answer to every single one of the problems. I think that one of the things that it probably did do was see was having

Presenter10:04

The complete antithesis of the feminist movement, which was my mother under my father's thumb, I didn't see myself settling down and being like Mummy, much as I admired her and loved her. I just really didn't see the thrill in shopping and cooking and cleaning the house and looking after three brats, which was me and my brothers and sisters. So you went off to drama school, to Rada, the Royal Academy, and you would go out in the evenings to jazz clubs and have fun. What did you look like then? I tried a lot to look like somebody called Juliet Greco.

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Who was the very dark, very long black hair and a long fringe? So I copied that. I had a very long fringe.

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um so you couldn't see my eyes and I which were covered in black.

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Eyebrow pencil all around them.

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And I wore black polo neck sweaters and black stockings and black ballet shoes and big skirts or very short tight skirts. Tons of bracelets. Nothing's changed really.

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huge gold earrings and um a sort of sultry look. And I used to go down to Hundred Oxford Street and dance to um Humphrey Lyttelton and George Melley would sing and um play Elvis Presley records. And did you discover you were deeply desirable to men?

Presenter11:23

That's about when it hit me as.

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Yeah.

Speaker 211:27

Listen.

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He's done so many wonderful things, but um I think that the wonder of you is something that brings tears to my eyes, and whenever I hear it I always think it's such a tragedy what happened to him, and can happen to too many people who take their fame too seriously.

Joan Collins11:43

Your kiss to me is worth a fortune

Joan Collins11:49

Your lost love is everything I guess I'll never know The reason why

Joan Collins11:59

Love me as you do at the one

Joan Collins12:08

The wonder of you waiting.

Presenter12:14

Elvis Presley and the Wonder of You.

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You decided quite early on in life, Joan, that you were going to be financially independent, didn't you? That no man was going to rule your life. Yes. Have you stuck to that? Oh, God, yes.

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Absolutely. I think it would have been wonderful to have

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been able to have m married somebody who was able to be um on an equal footing financially or but unfortunately it didn't happen.

Presenter12:41

Very early on you were spotted, weren't you, by a photographer who was looking for an innocent young face and he chose you. Well, yes. I think they were looking for yes, a sort of innocent young face. It was for um of a a beauty queen film called Lady Godiver Rides Again. What did the people at Rada think about all of this, all of your

Presenter12:59

Extramural activities on magazine covers and in films. Did they They were not happy.

Presenter13:05

They got so fed up with me going off to film tests and and my odd days filming and they said I had to make a choice. And by this time I'd been offered I Believe in You for which I'd had to test three or four times and it was

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the sort of part of the year. It was a young wayward girl, a good time girl as they were called then and I was um I'd just turned seventeen.

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And, um, I asked if I could take twelve weeks off with filming at Ealing and they said no, you've got to decide now. I'd only been at Radder for a year.

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So I had I made the decision, and the decision was to leave Rada and go and pursue this film career. I went and did various films for various people, and I always play this bad girl role.

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The Good Time Girl. Yes. And then Hollywood sent for The Good Time Girl. It certainly did. That was quite a red letter day, I must say.

Speaker 213:47

Yeah.

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Because it wasn't really Hollywood, first of all, it was

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Howard Hawkes was doing this film called Land of the Pharaohs in Rome, and it was an American film.

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And they had cast a girl for the wicked Princess Nellefer, but apparently stardom had gone instantly to her head and she started going round telling Howard Hawkes and Jack Hawkins what to do, and she thought that she was the second coming of of Grace Kelly, and so she was fired immediately, and they called me, who they'd seen in a few British films, and off I went winging my way to Rome, which was divine in those days. It was the height of La Dolce Vita.

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And there were thousands of American stars over there, and thousands of American co-productions, and I did this film, and then

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Twentieth Century Fox saw it and bought me from the rank organisation, which is quite amusing. Like sort of pound of Brussels sprouts, I was bought.

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Shall we have another record there? Yes. Um well at that particular time I was absolutely mad about Frank Sinatra.

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And um when I got on my first pack for that first incredibly long flight to Los Angeles, which did take a long time'cause you had to change in New York, um I played all the time when in my room when I was getting ready, Come fly with me.

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It's such a lovely day.

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Just say the words and we'll beat the birds down to Akapulco Bay.

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It's perfect for a flying honeymoon, they say.

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Fly with me, let's fly, let's fly away.

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Frank Sinatra and Come Fly With Me. Tell me about your early days in Hollywood. Were they completely dazzling?

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I have to admit that going to Hollywood at that particular time

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It was the last days of the t of the time of true glamour, of wonderful restaurants, of amazing nightclubs, of glorious premieres, of a time when the when the press still had a certain amount of respect for stars and celebrities, and um so consequently stars and celebrities went out, dressed up, had a wonderful time. Um I met within the first

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sort of week I was there I met Jean Kelly, Judy Garland, Humphrey Bogart, Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe.

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Um they were all around. For example, there were wonderful night clubs like Siro's and the Macombo and the Coconut Grove, and people used to go there and used to dress up, and you'd see Gary Cooper, whom I met, and you'd see Meryl Oberon, and these people looked just as good as they did on the screen.

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From Errol Flynn.

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I mean, I really met everyone and of course I was all all I was terribly young. I mean I was just twenty and um it was quite astonishing. I used to just sit with my mouth open in awe. You acted in fact with Bette Davis, didn't you? The Virgin Queen. She was Elizabeth I. How did you get on with her?

Speaker 216:59

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 217:00

She was visible.

Presenter17:03

Well, Miss Davis um is not a a great admirer of young attractive actresses, I have to admit. She was quite intimidating. Um she had pl this was the second time that she played Elizabeth I, and she'd shaved her head.

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which I thought was wonderfully daring of her. She'd shaved it back about five inches so that she could wear these red wigs. And she's quite an ogre, I have to admit, Miss Davis is. But she

Presenter17:28

She's one of those people who ha came from a school of hard knocks. She always had to fight. But I think it probably didn't make her as nice a person as she should be. You didn't take too kindly to Bing Crosbie, either, did you? Well, he's not nearly as nice as Bob Hope. Bob Hope is adorable and sweet and funny and the crew love him,

Presenter17:45

You know you can always tell about an actor or an actress by the crew. And um far be it from me to speak ill of the dead, but the crew did not like Bing Crosby when we did the road to Hong Kong together and they all loved Bob Hope and I agreed with them. Uh I just think that some people care about other people and some people don't and and the crew can certainly sh very, very shortly tell who is nice and who isn't. So would the crew on Dynasty know that you care? You'd have to ask that.

Presenter18:15

You acquired something else in Hollywood that was Duriger at the time, which was a shrink, an annalist.

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Why did you do that? Did you do that'cause it was fashionable, or'cause you needed one? Well, I was going out with this um boy, man, and two of his ble best friends and who became mine were Marlon Brando,

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Paul Newman and Jo Ann Woodward, that's actually three and they all went to shrinks, and all of their friends went to shrinks, and so uh all of us lesser mortals suddenly realize that

Presenter18:46

Shrinks were it. Besides which he told me how to save so much money by going to a shrink rather than spending my afternoons at Saxe and Magnans buying frocks. So I thought, well, why not go to a shrink? Let's see what that's all about. So I went.

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And um

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It was quite interesting, actually. I did since I'm not an analytical person and never had been, I did find out quite

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a bit about myself.

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Do you still have one? No, no. Given all that up? Yes. Don't need it? I don't think so. I went

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I went to a marriage counselor at one time when I was married to Ron.

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Because I really didn't want to.

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I I didn't want to have another failure.

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But uh it just really p prolongs the agony. Instead of making the decision you think about all the ins and outs and children and all of those things and

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We eventually did split up.

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Should we have another record?

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Yes, I would like to hear something from Puccini, and this particular piece of music from Manonlesco is, I think, so incredibly beautiful, and so romantic, and so stirring, that I could just play it over and over and over again, and I would do on my desert island.

Presenter20:58

The intemezzo from Puccini's Manon Lesco, played by the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Giuseppe Sinopoli.

Presenter21:05

You mentioned that, Joan, your your third husband, Ron Cass. You've written since about a period when you were married to him in the early seventies and you just had your third baby, Katie. You've described them as almost perfect years.

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Yes, that is true. I think that

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I had reached um a time in my life when I had done the career. I had become the big time Hollywood starlit. I mean, I don't really consider that I was ever really a star, but I

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um was quite well known and had acted opposite some of the most illustrious people in Hollywood. And I had decided that by that time that, although I liked being a star,

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It wasn't the be-all and end-all of my life, and I really wanted to concentrate on having my children, bringing them up, and doing the odd jobbing bit of acting if it came along. So we lived in the house in Highgate, and um Tara and Sasha were at the local school, and Katie was sort of one, two, three, four, five. And I really couldn't have cared less whether I was a star or not. It was only when

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For various reasons we had to leave England and go to America.

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In nineteen seventy five

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that, um, I became less happy.

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But was that would you describe those years as perhaps the the nearest to um a state of happiness that you've come? I think the last year of my life has been the the happiest.

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Because I have come much more to terms with who I am and what I am.

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And I

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Have a freedom that I haven't had before in my whole life. And I'm doing very much what I want to do. And there is no husband? No.

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You've been married four times, and and you've been very frank over the years about about your love life. Um do you ever wish you hadn't been quite so honest? Do you ever wish you'd been a bit more private? Well, I have to say, Sue, that I actually haven't been that honest in really.

Presenter23:05

Uh, I mean, maybe I have. I I am a sort of honest person. I don't

Presenter23:09

I mean, y y yes, I I was married. Yes, some of them were mistakes, but and and a lot of people would say, Oh, Joan Collins has had this um tragic love life. In actual fact, I haven't. I've had a wonderful life with all of the the men that I was married to and have been involved with have

Presenter23:24

for the time that we were together it's been

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absolutely terrific. And I am of the opinion that if you're with somebody

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And it's not working, if it's not bringing you happiness, that you should get out, because life's short, and life is very sweet, and it's not going to be too sweet if you're saddled with some man who makes you sick.

Presenter23:43

And you so you don't like the idea that people think, well, Joan Collins has been incredibly successful professionally, but she's really had a bit of a disastrous personal life?

Presenter23:53

Oh, no, I don't, because I don't think I have.

Presenter23:56

I don't regret certainly I don't regret my two marriages that brought me my three children. Not not in the slightest, but I think my first one I was far too young and

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I won't mention the last one.

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Is marriage now definitely OUT? Is that it? No. I never say anything definitely. I think, obviously, since I've done it four times, it's obviously something that I quite like.

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But I mean, it doesn't have to be marriage. Living with somebody would be fine.

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Shall we have your sixth record?

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Um, I'm a great fan of Andrew Lloyd Webber. I think that he is in terms of um

Presenter24:33

Britain, the best sort of composer can writer that we have. And I love The Phantom of the Opera. I went to see it about five times and um I love All I Ask of You.

Joan Collins24:44

Heritage every night it morning.

Joan Collins24:53

Will you love me more?

Joan Collins24:57

I don't

Joan Collins25:01

Love

Presenter25:14

All I ask of you from the Phantom of the Opera sung by Steve Barton and Sarah Brightman.

Presenter25:20

We were talking, Joan, about Alexis Carrington earlier on. She was, after all, a great turning point in your career. Did you know the minute you got your first whiff of her that this was the one for you?

Presenter25:31

Um well, I knew that I could probably make something of this role.

Presenter25:35

and although I only saw the first script and I'd never heard of Dynasty.

Presenter25:38

Because it had been on for 13 episodes in America and it hadn't come here. And it wasn't doing very well, either. No, it wasn't.

Speaker 225:42

And it wasn't j

Speaker 225:43

Yeah.

Presenter25:44

But um I had been watching Dallas previously and I had thought to myself, and I told my agent, I really would quite like to be in one of those soaps. I think I could probably do something with uh one of those roles. So when it came along

Presenter25:58

I thought.

Presenter25:59

that it was a part that should be played with a certain

Presenter26:03

Tongue in cheek, rather grand, glamorous, woman of the world quality. And they brought me, first of all, these funny little suits. And I said, I'm not going to wear those. I said, I want furs, I want gloves, I want hats and veils. And it created a bit of a fashion statement. Absolutely. She was very stylish.

Joan Collins26:20

Uh

Presenter26:21

The greatest problem I suppose she brought you is that that everyone has since assumed that you are like her. You are venal, ruthless, calculating, immoral. I know. Of course it is very difficult when you've been associated with a role.

Speaker 226:29

Timor

Presenter26:33

to get away from that image, and that's why what I want to do is I want to get away from that and and do more comedy, because I think I'm quite good at it. I was going to say, isn't I mean, isn't the answer to do comedy? I mean, we all remember you in those um chinsano actors in Leonard Rossi, and as you say, you played Alexis with your tongue in your cheek. I mean, there's a comedian in you, isn't there?

Speaker 226:47

I think it's a

Presenter26:53

I think so. I um I did one um comedy film with Paul Newman called Rally Round the Flag Boys, which I loved doing, and I do see the funny side of life a lot.

Presenter27:03

It is, of course, um daunting because I do get sent a lot of scripts which are Alexis clones.

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And, um I'm not saying that, oh God, Alexis is such so terrible, I want to forget it. I don't. It's been terribly good for me and

Presenter27:17

And uh I enjoyed doing it tremendously. And if they say to me, Do you want to come back and do

Presenter27:22

you know, the odd episode, which of course they are. Um, who's to say that I might not do it?

Presenter27:28

So, although it's been left as a cliffhanger, you might just return. I might.

Presenter27:33

But not on a permanent basis.

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Shall we have some more music?

Presenter27:38

Yes, let's have an aria, um an aria by uh Puccini, which is Omir Babino Caro. I'd like to hear uh Kiri Takanawa singing it.

Joan Collins27:49

Be of a king of God.

Joan Collins28:14

A good man Si Si Choyand raised him.

Presenter28:25

Yeah.

Joan Collins28:32

I saw you.

Presenter28:48

Comia Babino Caro by Puccini, sung by Kiri Takanua with the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by John Pritchard.

Presenter28:56

It does sometimes seem, Joan, that everyone is waiting for something awful to happen to you, for your bosoms to sag, or your eyes to bag, or something. I suppose it's part of your fascination. But d does that annoy you?

Presenter29:09

It doesn't really annoy me because I'm not the only one that they're doing that. I mean, Elizabeth Taylor gets it more than I do. But it's always women. I I think my point really is that they wouldn't do that to Paul Newman or to Telly Savalis. It's very unfair. I don't know, I think they do. I think they're starting to do it to people. It's as though getting older is some kind of a crime in this country and unfortunately also in America. But I do think that people do have a wisdom that they get as they get older, and there's no question but

Speaker 229:21

It seems very unfair.

Speaker 229:24

I think I stopped.

Presenter29:38

that people in their forties have got far more wisdom and knowledge than people in their twenties, and I think that should be appreciated. And they should be proud of themselves. Exactly. Is that is that why you hit the centerfold of Playboy at the age of fifty, because you were proud?

Speaker 229:46

Exactly.

Presenter29:51

Um yes, I think that I did that because what I was saying was, okay, perhaps not every woman of that age could do that, but I was saying that it is not only a girl of twenty three who can look good. I think there's far too much emphasis on the physical today. Um by the same token, um it was a sort of statement in a way, it was uh saying to women, look

Presenter30:16

Maybe you can't look exactly like this, but you should be able to know that you can look pretty good.

Presenter30:22

We were talking at the beginning about your having wanted to to to be a boy at one point for all those various reasons. It does seem, reading about you, that you have, if you like, approached your life in in quite a masculine way, this determination to be financially independent. You

Presenter30:37

You've pursued men and dropped them, you've earned the money, you've called the shots, you've taken the knocks. I i is you've kept the show on the road, is that how you see it?

Presenter30:46

Well, not exactly, because it's been a gradual thing, really. I um I mean, I remember being told

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When I came into the business at the age of seventeen sixteen actually

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That I better do what I could because by the time I was twenty-three I'd be washed up.

Presenter31:03

And I remember thinking that I just thought that was so unfair and wrong and that it wasn't going to happen to me.

Presenter31:11

So it's just coming to terms with the fact that life isn't easy, but you bloody well make the best of what the what cards you've got and play them as well as you can.

Presenter31:20

You said at the end of your autobiography, which you finished twelve years ago, you said it's taken me a long time to grow up.

Presenter31:27

But I think I'm almost there.

Presenter31:30

Are are you now, do you think, a grown-up? I think I am, actually, so. I I feel that I am, although I think I still have a rather

Presenter31:38

childlike side, which I probably won't ever lose, because I have

Presenter31:42

this sort of enthusiasm for life.

Presenter31:45

And I don't ever want to lose it. I like my life, I like who I am and and what I do, and I'm quite ha

Presenter31:52

That peace with myself.

Presenter31:54

Shall we have your last drink? Yes, I love Lionel Ritchie, and um I think this rather epitomizes perhaps a certain side of me. Love will conquer all.

Joan Collins32:06

Reaching out to each other

Speaker 332:08

Yeah.

Speaker 332:18

Uh

Speaker 332:20

Trying not to fall. Uh

Joan Collins32:23

Yeah.

Speaker 332:26

Uh

Joan Collins32:26

There's no need to hurry.

Presenter32:33

Lionel Ritchie singing Love Will Conquer All, much gyrating going on in here.

Presenter32:38

So as you uh stretch out on your desert island, Joan, and wait for the knight on his shining white yacht to come and rescue you, which of those records are you going to have to play more than any of the others?

Speaker 232:45

Mm-hmm.

Presenter32:50

Well, I think I would play the intemezzo from Puccini's Manolesco because I think it's the most um romantic and the one that I could hear.

Presenter32:59

More than any of the others. The most durable. Yes.

Presenter33:02

What about a book?'Cause we give you already there the uh the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. Hm. Well, that should take me a few years. Um I would I think if I can have the complete works of Shakespeare, then I'd like to have the collected works of Oscar Wilde. You're not really allowed collected we really ought to choose one bit of him.

Presenter33:20

Well, if I can't have the collected works of Oscar Wilde, then I'll have the picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. You shall have it, and a luxury.

Presenter33:28

Well, my luxury would be

Presenter33:30

Some kind of all-purpose suntan oil moisturizer, because if I didn't have that, I would probably turn into a prune very rapidly, since I'm not a strong believer in lots of direct sunlight on the face. So I would take an extremely large bottle of a moisturizing lotion. And preserve the face. And preserve the body. And the body, yes. And you could also cook with it at a pinch. Shh, don't tell me that.

Speaker 233:49

And preserve the body.

Presenter33:55

Joan Collins, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desertians. Thank you, Sue. It was great. I loved it.

Speaker 233:57

Thank you for your time.

Speaker 234:08

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.