Londoner’s Diary: Joan Collins reveals George Peppard pushed for kiss

Elton John Aids Foundation "Midsummer Party" - Party
Dave Benett
12 October 2021

Dame Joan Collins spoke out about how Breakfast at Tiffany’s actor George Peppard once tried to kiss her then treated her badly after she rebuffed his advances.

She recalled last night how the pair attended a party together before they began working on the 1970 spy film The Executioner and at the end he insisted on driving her home. Although she tried to get a taxi, he persisted.

Once they had arrived at the door he tried to kiss her, Collins said. When she told him no, pointing out that she had children in the house and was married, he responded: “What does that matter?” “I said ‘it matters a lot’,” she recalled. Afterwards they had to act together on the film in which Peppard played intelligence officer John Shay

and she played his love interest Sarah Booth.

“He never spoke to me on the whole film other than the scenes we had to do. We had so little chemistry, he was really horrible,” she told Graham Norton during a Fane event at Drury Lane Theatre last night.

Collins has spoken before about how the actor, who died in 1994, would attempt to French kiss during their amorous scenes. She always declined. Gruesome stuff.

Ramsay buries Savoy oyster bar

Rex

GORDON Ramsay has no doubts as he replaces Kaspar’s restaurant in The Savoy with one of his own, The River, after the former failed. “It’s buried, it’s six feet under,” the Hell’s Kitchen star tells us, explaining that the former restaurant and oyster bar Kaspar’s is “absolutely f***ing dead and gone”. He adds: “I don’t even have the f***ing ashes.” Let’s hope his new place in the same spot has more luck.

Tsitsi: Arrest was quite insignificant

Handout via Four Communications

TSITSI Dangarembga, the Booker-shortlisted writer held for protesting in Zimbabwe last year, collected a PEN Pinter prize at the British Library last night. In her speech she said she was “embarrassed” about her own arrest, as compared to others, “it was quite insignificant”. Dangarembga praised PEN for an “absolutely delicious” statement on her imprisonment, and said the pandemic had been a leveller across countries, having “globalised our knowledge of the struggle to remain one who breathes”.

Hale: Justice just isn’t working

Baroness Hale (Supreme Court/PA)
PA Media

BARONESS Hale says if she could change the world in any way it would be for Britain to “have a functioning justice system”. The former head of the Supreme Court then swiftly qualified her comment, saying that our system is “not functioning as well as it should in order to give everybody who needs and deserves it access to justice”. Lady Hale stood down as president of the Supreme Court in 2020. She also told the Ways To Change the World podcast that the justice system was under “enormous pressure”.

A Freudian slip from the usually measured Baroness?

Thames turns into tinseltown for festival

"The Power of the Dog" AMEX Gala Party
Tanya Seghatchian and Kirsten Dunst
Dave Benett

IT’S Hollywood on Thames this week for the London Film Festival. Stars Kirsten Dunst and Sam Neill were joined by producer Tanya Seghatchian and director Jane Campion at the premiere of The Power of the Dog on the South Bank. Sam Rollinson and Melanie Blatt were at the The Phantom of the Opera’s 35th birthday gala, while Floella Benjamin was at a Women of the Year lunch at the Royal Lancaster Hotel.

SW1A

ANDREW Mitchell MP told the launch of his book Beyond The Fringe last night that instead of writing a memoir, he had considered writing a “steamy Westminster bonkbuster”, which might have got him appointed as Culture, Media and Sport Secretary, but decided against it. Perhaps he might want to avoid Nadine Dorries for a time.

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VICAR’S daughter Theresa May is playing to type with a new unpaid role at the Westminster Abbey Institute, an organisation she says helps to “revitalise moral and spiritual values in public life”. Over the summer May also became chair of a green business group. It’s not all charity, though. She has been paid about £1.5 million in speaking fees since quitting as PM in 2019.

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