Dame Joan Collins (left) and her husband Percy (right)
Conjure up a mental image of Dame Joan Collins and what springs to mind? Glamour, wit and crystalline enunciation all wrapped up in an elegant couture gown.
We certainly do not picture her standing shoeless in the street, bereft of make-up, in her M&S jimjams and dressing gown.
But this is precisely what she was doing a week ago. Poor Joan was shivering outside in the chill of a spring evening in her nightclothes while her husband, Percy Gibson, was fighting a fire in their Belgravia flat.
‘It was freezing last Saturday and I was standing outside in thin socks, cotton jammies (from M&S) and my bathrobe, which I’d just grabbed on the way out, feeling quite terrified,’ she sniffs (she has a ghastly cold). ‘I didn’t think: “What would I save?” I didn’t even bring my handbag.’
Inside, meanwhile, the valiant Percy was battling through a blanket of smoke and dousing the flames with a fire extinguisher. ‘I couldn’t really see much, so I was spraying blindly. It was very hot, my eyes were stinging and I couldn’t breathe very well,’ he admits.
Dame Joan's home was damaged badly by the fire (pictured above their bathroom)
Dame Joan Collins (left) said the situation in her home left her terrified (right the bathroom after the fire)
‘It was overwhelming and terrifying because the smoke was acrid and cloying. I had to gasp for air.’
Joan, meanwhile, had called 999: ‘They said: “Are you alone?” I replied: “My husband is in with the fire.” And they said: “Just tell him to get out of there.”
‘The smoke alarms were beeping and by then the burglar alarm had gone off, too. The place was a cacophony of noise.
‘I went back to the flat and the smoke was so thick in the hallway I couldn’t take a step in. I yelled at Percy to come out, and eventually he did.’
Views of Joan Collins home which suffered fire damage where the London Fire Brigade said they were called last week
‘I don’t think you really have time to think in situations like that,’ says Percy. ‘The shock pushes everything to the back of your mind and you just deal with the here and now. You try to put out the fire. That’s your immediate thought: “How does the fire extinguisher work?”
‘And then, of course, the firefighters came and they go into the worst of the worst situations and are so selfless. They’re worthy of such high praise. In fact, I think they shouldn’t have to pay taxes!’
‘The thing is,’ reflects Joan, ‘if Percy hadn’t gone in with the extinguisher the entire flat would have been consumed by flames. What he did, in fact, was save the whole building. Percy’s a hero. I know a lot of guys who wouldn’t have gone in. He made a great sacrifice.
Dame Joan Collins says her husband is a hero (couple pictured above)
‘And we’re lucky to be alive. I keep thinking: “What if we’d been asleep and hadn’t heard the alarm? What if we’d gone to a movie?” ’
We’re chatting in the aforementioned flat — in a stately, early 19th-century building in one of London’s most expensive and prestigious squares — just three days after the drama. A distinct smell of smoke still hangs in the air.
In the guest bathroom, where the blaze began — and ended (thanks to Percy’s ministrations with the extinguisher and the prompt arrival of the firefighters) — all is devastated, charred and black. A window is broken; a lintel, burnt like firewood, has fallen to the ground. Lampshades and curtains have been consumed by the flames.
And in the adjacent bedroom, where Joan’s daughter, Tara, (one of two children from her marriage to her second husband, Anthony Newley) would have stayed last weekend if she hadn’t been detained at her home in Somerset, all is smoke- blackened and desolate.
Percy guides a brief tour of the devastation, proffering little blue plastic shoe protectors so smuts from the floor aren’t trodden throughout the rest of the flat.
He points out the portable mirror, believed to have caused the blaze when bright sunlight was reflected on to it. ‘Apparently this isn’t an uncommon cause of fires,’ he says. (Cautionary note: never leave mirrors on window sills.)
Dame Joan has said that a lot of the interiors of the home will have to be replaced after being damaged by the fire
When my daughter rings during our interview — he sees her name pop up on my phone screen, even though it’s on silent — he insists I answer.
‘Joan would answer if any of her children called. You must! It might be important,’ says Percy, 53, a film and theatre producer who is 31 years Joan’s junior.
When he and Joan were married at Claridge’s in 2002 — she wearing a lilac gown by Nolan Miller, the Dynasty costume designer, he in Gibson tartan kilt and black Prince Charlie jacket — few thought that it would last.
But here they are, 17 years on, so effortlessly at ease in each other’s company that they finish sentences for each other.
Joan Collins with her previous Husband Anthony Newley With Son Sasha Newley And Daughter Tara Newley
Dame Joan is emphatically an actress, not an actor — she belongs to an era when no female referred to herself as such, and she scoffs at political correctness — and in her seven decades of fame she is perhaps most feted for her role as ‘superbitch’ Alexis Carrington in the Eighties soap Dynasty (for which she won a Golden Globe award).
She is also a writer and columnist and today she sits in her favourite corner seat on the sofa in her snug, surrounded by her books and family portraits framed in ornate silver.
She is slender, fine-boned and mesmerisingly beautiful. I’m fascinated that she does not look ‘done’; when she frowns, her brow corrugates. Her smile is dazzling.
Around her neck she wears a large heart pendant inscribed, ‘P loves J’, designed by Theo Fennell.
‘Percy gave it to me for my birthday five years ago,’ she says, ‘And I always wear it.’
Her jungle-print jacket is from Zara. ‘Do I wear High Street? God, yes!’ she cries.
She and Percy tell me about last week’s fire, Joan beginning: ‘It was exactly a week after we’d come home from the U.S. I still had a cough and cold from the plane, and I had been busy opening a charity shop for my children’s charity Shooting Star, and had a photo shoot.
‘Then, on Saturday, we had lunch with a granddaughter [Tara’s daughter, Miel]. Afterwards, we’d thought about going to a movie — I wanted to see Wild Rose — but instead we decided to go home. I needed to rest, to get over this cold. My granddaughter told me that it’s called the 100-day cough . . .’
‘Only 93 more days to go!’ jokes Percy.
Joan takes up the story: ‘So we got home and I put on some pyjamas and socks and there was nothing on TV, so we decided to watch — as we often do — one of our favourite old movies in our bedroom, As Good As It Gets — which is ironic, considering — starring Jack Nicholson. I’ve known him for years; since he worked in the mail room at MGM . . .’
