Dame Joan Collins is furious about the scaffolding.

Not her own (although we'll get onto the subject of those extraordinary cheekbones), but the metal scaffolding outside her jaw-droppingly grand apartment in London's exclusive Belgravia.

It's been there for months now, and it's such a bore, she says, explaining that the ladders and boards appeared when her upstairs neighbours did some renovations.

They botched something, which meant the roof had to be replaced, which in turn has meant workmen all over her frontage. 

'How would you like to live with this stuff all day long?' she asks, standing with one elegant foot in the drawing room and one out on the balcony, which used to be such a tranquil spot. 

'You'll be getting out of the bath and going into the bedroom and the curtains will not be quite closed, and then suddenly you see a guy walking through, and you've only got your towel around you.

It's a total lack of privacy.'

Dame Joan Collins (pictured), who lives in London's exclusive Belgravia, has published the diary entries she started recording in 1996

It's been quite the saga, has the scaffolding.

Lawyers have been consulted. Letters have been written. At one stage - when she felt lockdown rules were being breached - the police were called. 

She fumed about it on Twitter, to limited sympathy. 'I got all these nasty remarks and thought, 'F*** this.
I do not need this.' So I stopped doing Twitter.

'What gets me is that you go to Pinewood Studios or Elstree and they build a village in ten days. Here they can't take down a roof in nine months! It's a joke!' Can we conclude that Dame Joan isn't the most patient person on the planet?

'Yes, that's my main fault. I'm very impatient,' she agrees. 

She seems to have grown quite fond of the workmen though, talking about them by name. When the publicity director from her publishers arrives, she asks her cheerily, 'Did you get whistled at?', then she remembers what century we're in. 

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'Oh, they don't do that any more, do they? It's not allowed.'

Back in the day, Joan was presumably whistled at more than most? On these very streets, she says. 

'When I was 16, I used to walk from my house in Great Portland Street to Gower Street to go to RADA in the shortest skirts and the tightest tops.

Of course, you didn't take any notice. It wasn't an insult. It was a compliment.' 

So she liked it? She wouldn't go that far. 'You neither liked it nor disliked it, it was just a fact, like traffic hooting.'

Joan's Dynasty days were behind her and she was suddenly invisible to Hollywood atem television studio hd usb capture bosses, when she began using a little tape recorder for diary entries.

Pictured: Joan toasting VE Day on her balcony in May 2020

Anyway, she shuts the window, and settles down to talk about ladders of a different sort - career ones. Dame Joan has published the diaries she kept at a critical juncture in her career, starting in 1996. 

Her Dynasty days, when she was at the pinnacle of her appeal (and earning power), were behind her and she was suffering that affliction so familiar to Hollywood actresses: being over 50, and suddenly invisible to the studio bosses.

'It's about how you cope with a smile on your face as you go down the ladder of success,' she says.

She never planned for these diaries - spoken into a 'cute little tape recorder' at the end of every day - to be published, but perhaps it was only a matter of time.
Dame Joan has now written way more books than she's had husbands (some 16, as opposed to just five husbands). 

She's stopped with the husbands now (she married her beloved Percy in 2002, and 'will never be with another man').

Her books - including several autobiographies and a raft of novels - haven't always been received positively by the critics, but no matter. 

'I have had a lot of s*** thrown at me for my writing, but I read one of my books during lockdown and I thought, 'This is good'.
It had a good narrative, good descriptions, a proper plot. 

Joan was starring in a play for a company Percy managed when they began a passionate affair.

Pictured: Joan and Percy on their wedding day

'A lot of the books today that are supposed to be good are not entertaining and, quite frankly, I want to be entertained. I do not want to be preached at by do-gooders and wokers.'

Well, guess what, her diaries are dazzling (so many parties!

So many bad facelifts on other women! So many suitcases at airports!) and certainly entertaining. They offer an extraordinary insight into a woman whose life continues to fascinate us. 

They cover the period when she met film producer Percy.
That story alone is worth the price of the book. She was starring in a play for a company he managed and she ran out of eyeliner (an occupational hazard if you're Joan Collins), so Percy offered to go and fetch some.