Perky, impish and nutty Academy award-winning actress and sister of Warren Beatty. Self-centred, single-minded and charming author of Dance While You Can who talks about her past lives and is into the occult. Whither the real Shirley MacLaine?

On the cover of her book, with black boots and lots of black leg, she looks like a happy hooker. But today she’s wearing violet sweater, jeans and cowboy-style shoes. She appears youthful and casual and gives me a force 10 handshake. ‘I like to wear loose, comfortable things,’ she says in an accent that is mid-Atlantic, nasal and with a twinge of southern. ‘I don’t like my legs to get cold, so I always cover them.’

She doesn’t think her legs as pretty as people say. ‘They look much better in black stockings with heels. I look much better nude than I do dressed.’ In the best of all possible worlds, would she go around naked? ‘Yeah. Nude with heels and a nice pair of earrings,’ she laughs. She says her garb gives the impression that she doesn’t care about what she wears, ‘and that if I do care, I’m not that good at it.’

She has red hair, slightly wispy at the back, eyes that were made in heaven, and fuchsia lips that have been very painted on. Close up, her cheeks show their crinkles. But she looks damn good and has had only two hours sleep.

‘Physically I’m heavier than I’d like to be. By 75 pounds.’ (Huge cackle.) ‘My ideal body was the way Twiggy used to look. I’d love to have a size 4 figure.’ She doesn’t like the loose flesh on her tummy or the ‘lovehandles’ on her back. ‘I don’t like to look at myself in the mirror backwards.’

She dyes her hair because it’s salt and pepper grey. ‘I don’t like that.’ But she’s happy with her looks. ‘Yeah. But I’ve never thought of myself as particularly pretty. I guess I’m kinda easy on the eyes.’ Her own eyes look both lively and sad.

She has decorated herself with a necklace on which hangs an ancient Buddhist symbol of a spiritual performer, and she has four earrings in each ear. ‘I’d have 12 if I had enough room. I’d put one in my nose, and one in my teeth if I could.’ She’s hindered only by the thought of the pain. A forceful personality, she has a very strong presence, and a humour in which, surprisingly, she sends herself up. She is hugely absorbed by her own character. The things she says often look cooky in print, but she doesn’t feel that way in real life. She’s also very earthy and friendly to the hotel staff. I liked her.

‘Jesus, how would I describe myself? I’ve written seven books, it’s taken 15 years and you want a nickel of crack? (A thumbnail sketch.)’ She then describes herself seamlessly. ‘I’m curious, impatient, focused, wilful, vulnerable, don’t like people to be afraid of me – some people are, but that’s their problem. Sometimes I can be detached, I don’t suffer fools gladly at all, don’t like small talk – sometimes my big mouth is too much for other people – very open-minded, judgmental, like to laugh, love slapstick humour, not very acquisitive.’ Phew.

Although she seems to convey the opposite in the interview, she says she cares deeply about what people think of her and that she tailors herself to elicit a pleasing response. What doesn’t she like about herself? ‘My impatience and judgmental-ness.’

She has written about her inner balance, peace and harmony in cosmic terms. (A quick read of Dance While You Can, reveals much psychobabble and pretentious tosh.) Where does she want to end up with all her personal growth? ‘I want to be able to meditate in peace at the drop of an eyelid.’ Her face looks stern, as it does mostly, but that’s because she’s concentrating.

She reckons her voice is getting lower as she becomes wiser. ‘I think a high voice is probably a sign of tension.’ She’s had a long time to get it right. In her previous lives, she has been a model for Toulouse-Lautrec and a maidservant for Nefertiti. ‘A really important one was on the Steppes in Mongolia. How do I know? I just feel it.’ Is she coming back again? ‘Yeah, maybe I’ll try Venus next time.’

This time round she’s 57 years old. ‘I’m glad that I never have to be young and insecure and conflicted again because I get happier as I get older. But I think something new and big and transformational and transcendental is about to happen to me. I don’t know what it is. Crewwwfff, crewwfff,’ she says, not for the first time making a strange noise through her nose in the style of someone who has just snorted cocaine. Does she do drugs? ‘I had one joint once and I stared at the test pattern on the TV for 15 hours.’ She hates anyone taking anything personality-altering and attributes her sinus problems to the hotel’s air conditioning.

In the book, she has put sex behind her. But now she has changed her mind. Where exactly does she now stand on sex? ‘Very rarely do I stand. (Laughs). It’s not as fulfilling!’ Professionally, she says, women in their 50s are no longer perceived as sexual beings. And personally? ‘I just had two years of . . . well, I wasn’t purposefully abstaining, sex just gave me up and it gave me an opportunity to have relationships with people without that sexual pressure.’

Does she think she’s sexy? ‘Yeah. I’m not as promiscuous as I used to be. It was fun, and I wasn’t as promiscuous as the word would imply. I was just promiscuous in relation to my upbringing. I’ve had a lot of lovers, but I’ve only had one at a time – it was serial monogamy.’

How many lovers? ‘I dunno. I wouldn’t even like to get into the counting of it.’ How would she define her sex appeal? ‘I’m spontaneous and childlike.’ She has piled her plate high with food and tucks in unselfconsciously, even eating a crumb off her jumper.

Is she eccentric? ‘Yeah’ – enthusiastic – ‘not because of my beliefs, but because of my lifestyle.’ I say she’s seen as cranky because of her mysticism. ‘People don’t see me as loopy here. Or, that’s not what comes out in the Press.’

Does she always need to be the centre of attention? ‘No. In fact most of the people I am with are much more theatrical’ – she is talking through a mouth full of food – ‘I like to be the woodwork. I’m shy – that’s my natural personality. I’m afraid of being judged, that’s why I don’t like to be the centre of attention.’

And is she self-absorbed? ‘Umm,’ she pauses, for the first time, ‘not really. I like to be centred in myself, some people would call that ‘self-centred’ or ‘self-absorbed’, and I’d say ‘fair enough’. If I’m not centred in myself, I’m not happy.’

And an egomaniac? ‘No,’ she says, with certainty. ‘I don’t have much of an ego. I’m always concerned, overly concerned, about the other person’s point of view. I’m basically a dancer and dancers don’t have ego.’ Dancers, she says, have will. ‘I am ruthlessly wilful. I won’t hurt anybody if I can avoid it, but I will certainly fix things so that what I want happens. But I’m not egomaniacal.’

Perhaps the accusation is levelled at her because much of her work is a tribute to herself. She has written seven volumes of autobiography and starred in a television drama about herself, written, of course, by herself. ‘That’s a search. It’s like I’m looking for who I am. Someone egomaniacal is already damned sure.’ Has she found out who she is? ‘No, only in parts.’

Amusing and nervous impresario who once forgot about a booking in Northampton, leaving the audience staring at an empty stage. Gimmicky and stocky promoter who once did the Spycatcher Pops – passages from the banned Spycatcher book set to music at the Barbican and with free seats offered to MI5 and MI6 members on proof of identity.

Charming and diffident man who throws Teddy Bear concerts to which adults get reduced tickets if they come accompanied by a teddy bear (booking form requires the name of the bear and his paw mark too). And man who worked for Victor Hauchhauser for 10 months, 28 days and 12 hours.

Enter the so-called Grand Old Enfant Terrible of the Concert Scene, the chap who promoted the recent Turandot at Wembley, the Arthur Daley of the music world and Britain’s most successful classical music promoter, Raymond Gubbay.

The potentially ghastly little philistine is wearing a safe and sober suit, stripy shirt and paisley tie – free of the flashy or spivvy traits one might expect from a big-time concert promoter. ‘I like to merge into the background and listen to what people are saying.’ He speaks in north London accent.

Before we met he was dressed in T-shirt and casual trousers. ‘Now I’m wearing the sort of clothes I’d wander out to a concert in.’ He fiddles with his hands, does a shoulder-heaving laugh and leans forward over the table. He is thick-set and balding with wonderful soulful brown eyes. ‘I eat too much and I sit down too much. What else? Oooh God! This is difficult. Go on, give us a clue, ho ho.’ Is he good-looking? ‘Oooh no, ho ho ho I just think I am pretty ordinary. Even when I was younger I never thought of myself as particularly good-looking. I’m just me.’

He says he’s happy with his bald patch. He started to lose his hair when he was 18. ‘I wondered whether I should wear a wig. But I’m happy with what I have – or haven’t – got. It’s just like a wide parting, isn’t it?’ He points to his hairline. He is 45 years old. ‘It never worried me. I’ve never been conscious of age.’

He is seen as the Placido Domingo type, clean-shaven, whimsical, resolute when roused, and clashing with the Pavarotti-style figure of the other impresario, Harvey Goldsmith. What does Gubbay think his image is? ‘I suppose people see me as being at the popular end of the market, as something of a wide boy – which I would deny.’

He is shy and very nervous, and gulps down his food and drink and wiggles around a lot while he’s talking, visibly displaying signs of tension. He’s also making great efforts to be honest, despite finding the questions so tough. He doesn’t seem the type who would set the world alight. But he comes over as a kindly, warm and generous man. One also senses that this is a man with regrets.

‘I’m impulsive. I like to get immediate results and I have a low boredom threshold. I like to see ideas come to fruition as soon as possible. What else?’ he says. ‘I can be very rash and not very responsible with money – spend first and regret later, you know.

‘I’m also a bit antisocial. When I’m not working, I have to be kicked to get out and join in. I really like just putting my feet up and relaxing. I’m probably a bit shy – people may find that strange, but I have always been a bit diffident and hanging back. That and being self-conscious is something I have had to get over.

‘Sometimes I have incredible bursts of energy followed by great periods of lethargy. I’m very unpredictable in that sense. But when I get the bit between my teeth, I really push on and achieve things. Other times I can really lack inspiration and get depressed and into second gear. I’m either firing on all cylinders or in a stalled position.’ Thus he describes the petrol in his tank.

What changes would he make if he could have a car mechanic work on his parts? ‘I suppose I would try to lead a less pressured life. I think the stress can sometimes be too intense – one doesn’t realise just how much it is until one stops.’

How does this stress manifest itself in him? ‘Irritability, short temper, sometimes lack of enough consideration for what people are telling me. I don’t lose my temper that often. When I do, I always regret it afterwards. You have to let off steam sometimes.’

He is a mixture of Russian, Baltic, Prussian and Spanish Sephardic Jew. He clears his throat and coughs. ‘Being Jewish isn’t important to me in a religious sense. But being part of an old grouping influences you in a historical sense. It is there subconsciously and comes out in the Jewish character of liking culture, music and painting. One also feels slightly vulnerable when looking back in history and seeing what has happened to the Jewish people.’ Everyone who is Jewish, he says, knows someone close to them who has been ‘hideously scarred’ by events in the past 60 years. Is he successful? ‘I suppose on the whole I have been. If the test is measured by enjoyment – and I don’t suppose it can be – I very much enjoy what I do. In the eyes of other people, I suppose I am successful.’ Is he rich? ‘No,’ he says, surprised. ‘I care about material things inasmuch as I like to have a comfortable lifestyle. But I’m not particularly aware of wanting to have lots of money.’

And what of love? ‘I’m not very lucky in love,’ says the man who once fell foul of the GLC Women’s Committee harridans by handing out roses to the girls in the concert audience on Valentine’s Day.

Married for 15 years, he is now divorced and lives with his children, for whom he cooks. ‘The downside of my work is that it makes relationships difficult because of the unsocial hours. My work had a damaging effect on my married life, which I regret.’

Ask him what makes him attractive to women and he laughs like a motor starting up. (He also wiggles his wheels, doing a version of a long-distance runner with his feet.) ‘I’ve certainly never felt that women were attracted to me because of my looks, huh huh huh. People have been drawn to me because of a common liking of music.’ He smiles and winks. ‘I’ve never felt I was a particularly good catch for anyone.’

Fay Weldon is drinking a cup of instant hot chocolate and talking about marriage, divorce and reconciliation. Just last month, her husband claimed she had fled their home to get away from a noisy neighbour. Then the author of Life and Loves of a She-Devil, Puffball and The Cloning of Joanna May (on ITV later this month), and Growing Rich (a TV series next month) announced that she had actually filed for divorce from her husband of 30 years, Ron Weldon.

‘After many years of harmonious marriage . . . he to pursue his painting, me to pursue my writing,’ she said at the time.

Now, four weeks later and speaking extensively for the first time of the breakup of her marriage, she says: ‘I very much hope that we haven’t permanently split up. It seems to me unlikely that anything that drastic will, in fact, occur.’

She spent Christmas Eve dinner and Christmas Day in Ron’s company. ‘We are getting on, increasingly, rather well, so we will just have to see what happens next.’ She gives an end of subject look.

She relents, with gales of defensive giggles and genuine amusement, and says that she left the matrimonial home because it’s easier to move a pad and pencil than an easel and paintbrush. (Former antiques dealer Ron metamorphosed only five years ago into a painter and jazz trumpeter.) ‘He needs light and all I need is a patch of floor. Anyway, I have a nicer nature because I’m more flexible and, you could add, ‘impetuous’. ‘I have too much respect for him to say a word against him. Let’s just say differences in perception of politics, of what morality consists of and of aesthetic sensibility made it difficult for us to function under the same roof. We used to have incredible arguments on the stairs about the nature of creation.’

The 60-year-old author who is currently working on a BBC bible (series blueprint) looks tremendous. She has been dieting and doing Calanetics from videos in the sitting-room and taking hormone replacement therapy. ‘I can’t understand why everyone doesn’t have HRT.’

The feeling that whatever is natural is somehow good and you shouldn’t interfere, perhaps? ‘Nature’s only interest is in having you procreate, then it throws you away. But I do not wish to be thrown away. I don’t even want to die.’

But she puts on weight and takes it off repeatedly. ‘I never thought I was obsessed with my size,’ she says, indignantly. ‘It’s not something that rules one’s life.’

She returns to the subject of Ron. ‘I could say, I suppose’ – cavernous pause – ‘that I cannot live any more with three dogs, 16 hens and 18 sheep, and a hen in the dog food.’ She laughs, ironically.

But these are merely symptoms of an underlying problem. ‘Yes, the problem of what you spend your energies on. I have a gregarious nature and like talking to people and listening. I am a very sociable person. I like to expend my energies on the outside world and he likes to spend his on an interior world.

‘It becomes difficult for me to put up with him. It is also very difficult for me to put up with not being with him and very hard for him to put up with not being with me.’

They always had their fairly basic differences in attitude. ‘But we managed, somehow, to overcome them.’ The divergence, however, became exacerbated with Weldon’s growing celebrity. ‘The differences do get more acute as my public face becomes better known. It becomes more difficult to live in a world which is cut off, because the outside world intrudes. You also become answerable for your actions.’

She doesn’t think the relationship had become destructive for her. ‘But I think it may have become destructive for him. We have been married for a long time and it is extremely difficult to separate yourself from another person, to know to what extent his views are mine and mine are his. ‘If things go wrong, what should be working constructively begins to work destructively and it is important to have a high opinion of the other person, or a good opinion. And if that isn’t available for both partners, you begin to see yourself out of the other person’s eyes and you may not like what you see.

‘The other person may be completely right. But you would very much hope you could get them to turn around.’

The woman who once said she’d rather be in prison than trapped inside an unhappy marriage regards marriage as a very serious affair, not undertaken lightly, and unhinged with great difficulty.

Her peace negotiations with Ron are at that delicate stage when they could break down. ‘It might,’ says Weldon, scratching her head and looking to the side, ‘even be a little like the Arab-Israeli peace conference.’ She feels she is sitting there while the Israelis stalk up and down making wild gestures. Ron lives up the road (the occupied territories) in the ivy-clad house she moved out of.

She’s living in the neighbouring Somerset village of Pilton in a dear cottage (‘rented accommodation,’ as she says crossly) with a river at the end of the garden, his paintings on the walls, unmade beds and a sloppy mess in the kitchen. (She spends half her time in Somerset and the rest in a terrace house in Kentish Town. Curiously, she says she is going to move back to London at Easter.) So what is going to make it possible to go back and function under one Somerset roof? ‘One of us has got to bend.’ And will it be her? ‘Well, you sincerely hope . . . you don’t know . . . it depends.’

Throughout her talking about her marriage, one gets the feeling she doesn’t know whether she is coming or going. She takes a sip of instant chocolate, enjoying the chemicals. (You feel she’d rather that than Go to Work on an Egg, the slogan she created when she was a copywriter. ‘When I get to Paddington and take a deep breath of London air, I think it’s wonderful.’ Ron, by the way, liked lentils and home-baked bread.) Weldon is wearing a dusty pink jacket, with shoulder pads that hunch up around her face. She is on the short side, fleshy, with a huge bust, and blue, blue eyes that are upward tilting and set in an open face. Her face is pretty and expressive, but she is not photogenic. Her eyes can look sad, but her face has the expressions of someone who thinks life is a big joke. She spent her early years in New Zealand. Her father was a doctor and her parents divorced when she was five years old, thereafter living in different parts of the country. Weldon lived in an all-female household with her mother, older sister and grandmother.

‘Life was very hard and we had to survive. My mother had to support two children, which wasn’t easy.’ (Her mother, a romantic novelist, ended up running an advertising agency.) Aged 14, Weldon came to England and felt ‘in exile’.

When she was 17, her father died. She hadn’t seen him since she was 14. What was that like for her? ‘It was dreadful, dreadful. I mean shattering to the extent that you don’t quite recover from it properly.’ She is touched, caught unawares by the question, without defences or automatic answer. ‘When there’s been that gap, it’s very hard to come to terms with the loss of somebody you never really knew, because you only knew them when you were a child. It’s very difficult to come to terms with that.’ She sounds enormously sad. She has tears in her eyes.

‘It was a major loss. But my mother is still alive.’ She lives near by and they see one another frequently.

We discuss Weldon’s health. Her heart sometimes beats at twice the normal rate beneath her generally unflappable and serene exterior. ‘I just go into hyperdrive if anybody upsets me.’ (She has plasters on her wrist today because it happened the previous night. As usual, she had to drive herself to hospital where she was wired up, given a cardiogram and an injection to slow her heart.) It wasn’t a call from the Annex (as she dubs her real home) that caused it, but rather matters literary. ‘Someone upset me on the phone about Angel Clare and Alec d’Urberville.’ She screams with laughter.

Hers is a condition that affects people who talk a lot and have loads of adrenaline and are constantly getting more done in a day than can reasonably be asked. She claims to like this stress. ‘Oddly enough most people who get it feel absolutely terrified, but I don’t.’ (She is a great coper.) It happens about three times a year, but more if she is going through patches of tension. ‘Yes,’ she looks reluctant, ‘it has been happening quite a lot recently. Christmas Eve was the last time I was in hospital. Ha-ha.’ She’s a Leftish, humanist, feminist and omnivorous reader – cheerful, buoyant and immensely likeable. Not the dark and miserable woman full of rancour and savagery that one might expect from her books. She also has extended senses – they might be called psychic by someone with a less scientific mind.

She has been a breeding machine (she laughs at the words) and has begat a Nicholas, Daniel, Tom and Sam. The first from a short-lived marriage to Ron ‘Number One’ Bateman (whose name she normally claims to have forgotten). ‘I just like children. I think it’s extraordinary to see what comes out.’ The youngest lives with her and she drives him daily to school at Millfield. To her surprise, she works with the others sometimes.

‘I do say to people that if you are going to be a writer, you’ve got to be a bad mother. But I think I’m a bad housewife and a kind mother.’ She used to feel great anxiety as a mother, and would weep from self pity and rage, feeling trapped by other people’s needs. ‘As you earn more, you’re not nearly so angry because you can always call a taxi and go to Harrods.’ On Weldon’s birth certificate, she is recorded as ‘Franklin Birkinshaw, boy’, and ‘boy’ is crossed out and ‘girl’ added. ‘Naturally, anyone would have thought I was a boy. Then my parents just called me Fay, having realised they were in error calling me Franklin.’

She smiles mischievously and suggests we go up to the Annex and pretend we want to buy a painting.

Friendly and bejewelled codpiece-wearing rock and roll star grandfather with the new single Are You Ready to Rock. Glittery, irrepressible and outrageous monument to high tack who has survived alcoholism, drug dependency and bankruptcy to turn into a vegetarian Buddhist. Autobiographer of Leader who once took a driving test in a Rolls-Royce while wearing platform boots and a fur coat.

This is the 47-year-old perennial teenager; the Paul Gadd who grew into a Gary Glitter.

The Legend is wearing one earring, dirty nails, pouffed-up hair (five inches high) and yellow hands that are the result of a sun lamp or make-up. Today the new slimline Glitter has foregone platform shoes – ‘Incidentally, the idea originally came from a Jean Genet play’ – sequins and a sparkly suit with centurion shoulder pads.

‘I still wear them on stage, but nowadays I don’t feel I have to wear them all the time.’ He used to wake up in the morning and act as if he were permanently on camera.

Instead he’s donned a black leather waistcoat and jacket, thinking it quite punky and space-agey. ‘I just want you to see the glitter from within,’ he shouts, waving his hand in the air. ‘I like black, but if I’m in the country, I wear jeans most of the time. My fans always call me the Leader, so I have to wear something quite strong.’ He thinks the name Leader appropriate and democratic.

What does he see in the mirror? He has an athletic appearance and piercing blue eyes that are far apart and look angry. ‘This is the way I always wanted to look. My eyebrows were an accident’ – they are pencilled in in a look of permanent surprise – ‘I did the Rocky Horror Show in New Zealand and they got shaved off and didn’t grow again. I’m rather pleased about it, because I think they have a better shape.’

And what of his glorified Tony Curtis dyed hairpiece? He gives a daggers look. ‘No, no, it’s all me. That’s the astonishing point. The hairpiece is the chest. If you see the Rolling Stones video, the opening line is ‘this is Gary Glitter’s chest wig’.’

He is 5ft 8in but 6ft 4in in his platforms, he laughs. ‘I’ve got short legs and I’m chunky. I think it was Palmer in his history of rock and roll who said the Jaggers and Bowies were like ballet dancers, but Gary Glitter was more like a truck driver.’ Glitter admits to vanity, saying it is necessary, particularly before going on stage.

‘I’m good-looking in so much as my teeth are still my own, I work out and I go running most days. I don’t think I’m a classic beauty – but I’ve never had any trouble attracting the opposite sex.’

He is the former self-dubbed king of one-night stands. ‘Seeing as I was on the road all those years, one-night stands were the only chance of any relationship I had,’ he says. ‘I don’t go in for that quite so much now, I don’t think people are so promiscuous nowadays, and I’d rather make it two or three nights!’ He says he used to wake up with people and didn’t know how the hell they got there.

So what makes this erstwhile sex symbol – ‘I never thought I was’ – a hit with the dames? (Most of his friends are women.) ‘Well, I think the opposite sex likes somebody who has a laugh. I’ve quite a sense of humour and don’t mind laughing at myself. The other attractions are probably my wealth and fame.’

He also thinks women are keen on discovering the Real Him. ‘I think with every entertainer, there’s a shyness within that makes them actually become extroverts.’ He used to walk out on stage with the women in the audience screaming and throwing their undies at him. Did he like having knickers chucked at him? He looks amused. ‘Yeah, well, naturally. I mean who doesn’t?’

He expresses himself in decibels, with a sort of urgent energy with an angry edge to it that hits you like a punch. ‘It’s because I’m deaf,’ he says, more subdued. ‘A couple of years ago, I thought, why don’t I go to cocktail parties and stuff? I realised I didn’t enjoy it because I couldn’t hear properly. Obviously over the years all the rock ‘n’ roll and shouting and everything has made it so I can’t hear everything. So maybe I do talk loud.’

One can imagine him getting very angry, having a foul temper. ‘I’ve got a terrible temper – but most of the time I keep it wrapped up. If I unleash it, it gets very bad – but it never usually gets that far.’ He thinks he’s typically Taurean, like a bull in a china shop. ‘I like to get things done, everything goes flying, there’s always chaos around.’

He is fabulously funny, with a brilliant self-mocking style, a pop star-sized ego, a volatility and also what one suspects is a great vulnerability beneath the showman front. He is also no fool. Ask him to outline his character attributes, and his Dr Spock eyebrows shoot up. ‘I think I’m quite generous with myself and money. I dislike my bull-like attitudes at times, when everything is flying and people get hurt. But I have immense energy and I’m terribly stubborn, so when I want to do something, nothing will deter me.

‘I’m a bit spoilt, well, very spoilt. I now have people around me who will actually say No to me. For a long time, probably because of getting into drink and drugs, I was giving off so much crap that it was easier to say Yes, yes to me. You know what it’s like if you live with a monster. ‘You see, I’m a professional teenager as well. I have a rock ‘n’ roll attitude to pretty much everything I do. It’s like trying to keep the beast tamed and locked up.’ He now tries only to let Gary Glitter out of the cage when he goes on stage. When he’s walking in Somerset, he’s Paul Gadd. ‘Well, I’m still discovering Paul Gadd after all the Glitter years. He is quite lonely, quite insecure at times and, like everyone, has down moments. I find I’ve given a lot to my work over 33 years, and not very much to him.’

He says he has a good social life but still feels lonely. ‘Yeah, I do. I think it’s only because I talk too much about myself. I’m starting to give more and try to listen to other people.’

He wanted to be a star because he was mad on Elvis Presley (and keen to be the centre of attention, and dying to impress the girls at school). In what way is he like Elvis? ‘It’s a rock ‘n’ roll attitude that is slightly moody. You know, an attitude of motorbikes and Boys Own stuff . . . But I look a lot tougher than I am, so I make myself tougher than I should be.’ How did he feel when he was described as a has-been? ‘It didn’t feel too bad because I believe so much in what I’m doing.’ But he got to the stage when he was drinking six cans of Special Brew in the morning before a line of coke, ‘for over 30 years’.

He was bankrupt, his girlfriend had left him and he was drinking extra hard. He stopped without any help. ‘I did it by myself really.’ He thrice attempted suicide during those years. ‘It was more an accident than anything else’ – he crosses his arms defensively – ‘I think most of the time I just wanted some peace, really. A bit of sleep. Fortunately it never happened.

‘Since I’ve stopped drinking and all that stuff, I don’t mind turning around and saying, look, I feel shitty today, help. I think that’s what it’s about, facing up to these things. Every now and again you have to look at yourself and say, what kind of a human being am I?’

Friendly and magnanimous man who comes but once a year over snowy towns and Christmas trees, dipping into his sack of gifts. Dignified and deep-voiced postman cum chimney sweep who works during the season of goodwill and commercialism. Ebullient and jolly gentleman with rosy cheeks. Or sceptical, curmudgeonly and grumpy schizophrenic who is part cultural attache and part million-dollar mogul.

Enter, on an environmentally friendly sleigh, Father Christmas. ‘I’m also known as Santa Claus,’ he says, smacking his reindeer on the bottom and turning off some particularly nasty electronic Noel bells. ‘I don’t care what you call me. And I’d rather have a Saab.’

We’re sitting in Riva, one of London’s most fashionable Italian restaurants, in which Santa’s hero Grey Gowrie dines – Santa’s choice of eaterie. He points out that the food is excellent and that he used to be called Father Frost in what was the Soviet Union. ‘For political reasons.’ He picks a particularly beautiful snowflake earring out of his sack, ‘From Manguette, London’s best costume jewellery shop,’ he says, curiously indulging in some product placement.

He’s wearing a Father Christmas robe – a horrid synthetic white and red coat of the type favoured by cheap impostors in the Harrods grotto, and a wide black belt and coal-coloured boots.

It’s fake fur around his hat. ‘That’s not because I’m ecologically minded but because I spend most of the bloody year sorting out presents. This is all I could get my hands on,’ he says, shooting me a look through a gritty, baleful eye and taking a bite of grilled radicchio with extra virgin olive oil on it. ‘Makes a change from frigging cheap mince pies and cooking sherry,’ he says.

He carries a piece of plastic holly and is covered with snow from a spray can. What does his look say about him? ‘That I have to live my life as if I were on camera the whole time. Worse than that, as if I were on Wogan 24 hours a day.’

He looks crossly at the couple sharing some beetroot gnocchi at the next table. The man who has been accused of being a figment of the imagination, a creation, or nothing more than a story for children, spits as he speaks and says that you don’t get beetroot gnocchi in the North Pole.

It has been said that his garb reflects fetishistic obsessions. ‘Oh, yeah,’ he says, looking visibly discomfited and letting out some unpleasant gas. ‘I suppose you’re going to ask me next whether I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus was based on fact.’ He laughs, a bronchial laugh, and his beer belly heaves. So how does he see himself sexually? ‘I think the fact that I romp through the bedrooms of Britain and come down chimneys proves, irrevocably, that I am a sex symbol.’

He is a hard person to read, and it is difficult to tell whether he is being sardonic. ‘I regard the Press as the greatest menace in my life. They are always trying to prove I don’t exist. Now I suppose you’ll be doing a Santa in Sex Romp type headline. Ho ho ho,’ says the man whose department store imposters spend their time luring tots into grottos and getting children to pose in their laps.

Father Christmas has a flowing white beard, white moustache and massive white locks. ‘What do I think of myself physically? I think I’d look at home sleeping in a shop doorway along the Strand.’

He says he feels rather embittered that he’s unable to change his image. ‘I have to look like this.’ He says he’s restricted in his looks, imprisoned by people’s expectations of him. ‘In much the same way as there’d be outrage if the Queen turned up to a party wearing a bondage outfit.’ He has a hangover, but takes a generous slug of his Barolo wine. ‘D’yer know’ – he flicks some dandruff off his shoulder, pretending it’s snow spray – ‘I once got lockjaw from keeping a fixed grin?’ That was in the days before he went to Santas Anonymous, a self-help group for Father Christmases. His polenta with fegato in sage and a side portion of porcini arrive.

Father Christmas surprises. He doesn’t look, smell, or even eat the way one might expect. Underneath the slightly aggressive bravado, one senses a cautious man. Perhaps a lonely one too. But the thing that most strikes one is his incredible age – he is 142 years old. One suspects he would like to be retired. (He once said in his Day in the Life profile in The Sunday Times that he found his life ‘cold, disagreeable and lonely’.) In addition, he also shows an unexpected and scholarly interest in Nordic literature and 16th century Russian icons.

‘I give more free handouts than the DHSS, ho ho ho, and I run my worldwide operation on my own. So I guess I’m pretty entrepreneurial,’ he says. ‘I’ve faced an awful lot of vicissitudes, but I do have a will and zest for life.

‘You know, it’s a filthy job. People think I’m patriarchal and heterosexist – and I’m not. I’m quite wise, but I’d like that to be off the record,’ he says, starting to help himself to my duck.

‘Obviously everyone knows I have a history of alcohol abuse in my family. I mean you don’t get a red nose and a gut like mine by looking at Perrier,’ says the man who is clearly drunk in every picture ever seen of him. ‘I guess that’s why I often snore on the job.’

‘What else? Isn’t that enough . . . I’m interested in child psychology. I guess I’m a bit like God,’ he says, modestly. ‘I mean, children think I’m wise, and bearded, and come out of the sky. Personally I think I knock spots off God. And I’m the most successful promotion story since Jesus Christ.’ What of his childhood? Was it a happy one? ‘Well,’ he says, clearing his throat, ‘my ancestor was St Nicholas (Bishop of Myra in the Province of Lycia) who lived in the middle of the fourth century.’ Santa arches his back and looks proud. ‘There were once more than 400 churches dedicated to him in England. He was the most popular saint the Christian world has ever known.’ It seems Santa doesn’t want to talk about his parents, if he ever had any. So in a rare fit of yultide charity, I let the subject drop. Is he kind? Santa looks out of the window. ‘Oh, look, there’s a Saab.’ Or grumpy? He raises his eyebrows. ‘Do you know, I’m part of the dependency culture. And I have a fantastic ability to help people overspend.’ Yes, yes, but is he grumpy? Oh dear, Santa’s drunk.

How does he feel about his impersonators? ‘What!’ he booms. ‘Those people walking the floor of department stores, hardly being paid. Impostors!’ he says, taking a swig of his cappuccino and getting the froth caught in his beard. ‘I bet they can’t claim the nationalities of various different countries.’ He smiles. ‘They’re not committed European federalists.’

It’s very brutal and violent with executions and torture. ‘But kids love that. It’s a family show,’ says Jeremy Isaacs, director general of the Royal Opera House and former chief executive of Channel 4. He’s talking about Puccini’s opera, Turandot. The first time ever that the Royal Opera House is staging an opera at Wembley Arena.

‘It’ll bring opera to people who don’t normally go, many of whom have heard the tune the BBC plastered all over their World Cup coverage,’ he says. ‘They can have popcorn and a terrific time.’

During the course of our interview, Isaacs spoke of his impressive artistic achievements and the problems that have beset him at the Opera House. Revealingly, he also talked for the first time of his brother’s assassination at the hands of terrorists, the painful death of his first wife, his remarkable parents and his childhood. This from a man who is notoriously private about his family.

He is sitting in his voluminous office wearing a jazzy tie and socks that don’t match. Nearby is his bright plastic dispenser of chocolate Smarties (all eaten) – at Channel 4 he kept a bowl of jelly beans – and a John Glashan Spectator cartoon of Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel. ‘I don’t like it either,’ the Pope is saying to some religious chappie. ‘But it’s too late to get someone else.’

Isaacs is not tall, and has a strong face with a prominent nose, wavy grey hair and small brown eyes, with the aura of somebody powerful in an understated way. He takes himself seriously for the purposes of the interview – which he doesn’t like doing – but off tape there are flashes of humour and geniality. One imagines a kindly, sensitive, quiet and gentle soul, but also one who wants his own way, doesn’t suffer fools, finds criticism hard to bear and has a bruised self-esteem. Known as someone who likes a drink, one can also imagine him eating emotionally.

The first of the two tragedies in his life came on 4 July 1975, when his brother Michael and sister-in-law were killed by a PLO bomb in Jerusalem. ‘I saw the television news at Thames and thought ‘hmm’, and went home after work. At about six o’clock a relative came to tell me that they’d heard on the phone that among the dead were my brother and his wife. My brother was unhappy in this country and had emigrated to Israel where he was very fulfilled and content. They had two children.

‘They left the children with her mother on a Friday morning to go and do some shopping, and 20 minutes later there was a loud bang and they were both dead from a bomb that had been put behind a refrigerator at a traffic light.’

Isaacs went to Hove that evening to tell his parents what had happened. ‘I caught the train with Tamara (his first wife), and I rang the bell and they opened the door. Of course, they always knew when I was coming to see them. On this occasion they were aghast to see me. They knew something was wrong. They went into the sitting-room and sat down and I told them what had happened.

‘My father gave a howl of pain and grief like a wounded animal. I’ll never forget the noise that he made, and my mother clutched the arms of her chair. With tears streaming down her face, she said, ‘Isidore, we must go on’. I thought that was staggering and wonderful. Really she was saying to him, ‘Don’t let this crack you’. It didn’t mean she wasn’t distraught with grief, but she knew she had to find the strength to go on.’

Isaacs grips his hand in a fighting fist, choking back emotion. ‘That’s what I get from my parents,’ he says, punching the air.

The second tragedy to befall him was the death of his South African-born wife Tamara, whom he met after studying at Oxford. ‘I was very happily married for 28 years. Then in 1986, Tamara died of cancer. I coped by hurling myself the more into this and other things. I think one of the reasons that I left broadcasting was that Tamara’s death was the end of a great chapter in my life.’ He sounds choked and his sadness is palpable. ‘I partly put in for the job of director general at the BBC because I think she would have wanted me to.’

What of his relationship with his parents? His father – ‘quiet, courteous, scholarly, self-fulfilled’, in his words – was a jeweller who left school at 14. His mother, a formidable woman, was a doctor to the tenement tenants in the Gorbals and helped sustain the family during the 1930s slump. This helps one understand the radical, slightly Leftish and pugnacious tendencies for which Isaacs was renowned in broadcasting. >From his parents, he says he inherited enjoying being at home, and a liking for paintings, travel, celebrations and small parties.

Isaacs recalls a happy childhood. But, aged seven, along with his two younger brothers, he became a wartime evacuee, sent to the country for five years. ‘That was pretty traumatic. There was a sense of loss and being cut off from our parents. It severed bonds at an early age that took some repairing later.’

He was an achiever who did well at school and then won an exhibition to Oxford, where he got a second in Greats. He played cricket, football, joined the Labour Club and was president of the Oxford Union. ‘Maybe it had something to do with being Jewish in Scotland. One felt one had something to prove,’ he has said.

Director generalship of the BBC, to his mind the heights of broadcasting, would have been such validation. When he didn’t get the job, he sold the family home, left broadcasting and married Gillian Widdicombe, now arts editor of the Observer. ‘I began again, in a way.’

Both Isaacs’s children have now left home. ‘I don’t see a great deal of them. Yeah, I get on pretty well with them.’ He is also happily remarried. ‘I’m the marrying type, really. If you’re with someone you love, it’s bound to help both of you. Gillian is pretty tough, you know. She has her very sound and strong critical opinions. I don’t want to hear too many of her home truths at 11.30 at night.’

He must mentally compare his wives and still feel grief. ‘Wounds heal, wounds heal,’ he says, sadly. ‘I’m grateful for it rather than mourning it. Of course I still think of my first wife. But ‘the past is a different country’ . . .’

The country in which he now resides is the Opera House. Isaacs, appointed there in 1985, has been assailed on all sides. ‘There hasn’t been never-ending criticism,’ he says. ‘There has been lots of lovely praise, though the newspapers don’t remember it. This season has had a terrific critical response.’ He fidgets and fiddles and coughs, and sometimes stutters ever so slightly.

Isaacs has been attacked for his policies, financial strategies and productions, and has suffered ongoing financial difficulties, dissent and problems of morale. He has alternately been accused of alienating Government, Arts Council, sponsors, the Press and even the opera-going public.

Most recently, there was a debilitating industrial dispute, just settled, which lost £580,000 at the box office. Meanwhile, the Covent Garden deficit approaches a projected £3 million and prices for seats have become astronomical. Publicly, Isaacs’s response to criticism has been to emphasise the artistic quality of the productions.

‘I don’t feel we have cracked it here (cough) but I feel pretty pleased with what has happened since I have been here (cough),’ he says. He then talks seamlessly, bemoaning his ‘wholly inadequate public funding’ and defending himself artistically against critics of his three companies. ‘I can never say, ‘I’m going to spend the next three months or even three weeks or even three days going into rehearsal, watching what we do, seeing if my ear or eye can help improve things’. Because every single day one is wrestling with accounts. People shouldn’t be in that hand-to-mouth situation. One’s colleagues abroad can’t understand how we stick it or achieve what we do.’

And the personal toll of such unremitting pressure? ‘If you ask why the job sometimes threatens to get me down, it’s because the financial problems never go away, never let up. I don’t think I’m tetchy or aggressive. I’m my old ebullient self. But the problems here are very wearing and unceasing. I grit my teeth, but it’s difficult to see an end to them.’

Would he rather do something else? ‘No, this is a wonderful job,’ he says, with broadcasterly exuberance. ‘It is hugely demanding, taxing and very difficult. I enjoy it. But I don’t want to do it forever – and they may not want to keep me.’

He’s 59 years old. ‘I think I’ll retire at 65, if I last that long. I enjoy being busy. But already I dream about reading (political biographies and history), walking and seeing the world. Of doing different things, daft ideas which won’t happen.’

He has worked seven-day weeks at various stages during his career. A perfectionist, wanting to make sure that every single frame in his film was exactly as it should be. (He spent 30 years in broadcasting and misses being engaged in the world on a broader front.) He might make television programmes again, but he doesn’t want another job in television. (He claims to have got over his upset at Michael Grade being appointed to succeed him at Channel 4.) ‘I had lunch the other day with Michael Checkland, director general of the BBC. I told him this has been the hardest grind I’ve ever encountered. But I’m glad I came here and didn’t get his job. I think that may have been too much for me. It’s a hell of a job.’

One suspects Isaacs would have punched his fist in the air, and had a jolly good go.

Just as the Government cannot throw off the gigantic shadow of Mrs Thatcher, so her children cannot escape it either. Carol Thatcher struggled to find an independent identity while her mother was in power. Now that Mrs Thatcher shakes her gory locks at her successors, Carol is still being called to account.

Her failure to pay a £32 poll tax bill is a matter of national interest. But she does not attract the same public indignation as brother Mark. Never the favourite child, Carol has achieved wide popularity. She had not demanded privileges nor pity. She is what the British call A Brick. Carol, 38, presents a tall, robust slightly hefty figure. She wears loads of noisy, chunky jewellery – ‘she looks like a walking mobile,’ says one of her friends – and lots of make-up. She appeared on the list of Worst Dressed Women while in Australia, a fact she jokingly brings to people’s attention. She has said she just puts on whichever clothes are nearest. ‘She likes to look smart, but she has a problem cultivating the feminine side of her nature because she is so jolly hockey sticks,’ says a colleague.

‘Carol lives a very ordinary life, is very much one of the gang and would never dream of pulling rank,’ says her best friend Gabrielle Crawford, the former wife of Michael Crawford. (‘I do wish people would realise I’m just an ordinary sort of bugger,’ Carol likes to say.) She lives alone in a modest two-up two-down in Fulham with a massive satellite dish on the roof. ‘It’s Chinese crossed with Peter Jones,’ Carol once said of the interior.

A friend says she had up that poster of Gone With the Wind that had her mother and Reagan’s faces superimposed, the theme being that they were going to blow away the world. Her mother asked her to take it down, but she didn’t.

Publicly she has denounced the idea of marriage – humorously, rejecting school runs, being a switchboard for children’s calls and errant au pairs. But the truth is that she has had unhappy, broken love affairs and at 38 remains less than happily childless and unmarried. ‘I think she desperately wants to be married and have children,’ says one friend.

‘She hasn’t found the right man. It’s down to that. You couldn’t meet anyone more fun. It’s not fair to give the impression that she is particularly lonely,’ says Gabrielle Crawford. ‘She has got lots of friends and she travels a lot. It’s not easy to have that sort of career and children. It could still happen, and he’ll be a very lucky man. Still, for the moment, Carol has no boyfriend.’

She had a publicised and unhappy love affair with Jonathan Aitken – after which she left for Australia. More recently, it was Roger Alton, weekend-section editor of The Guardian, whose photo occupied a place on her mantelpiece.

‘She desperately needs to be loved and she had a tumultuous relationship with Roger. She was besotted with him. And the more he mistreated her, the keener she became. She was deeply upset at the break-up of the relationship.’

But years of experience have taught Carol how to ‘put a brave face on things’. She grew up with a working mother, which was slightly out of vogue at the time. She had a nanny, then went to a boarding school in Hertfordshire which she announced she was going to leave, aged 16. She then went to St Paul’s in Hammersmith before London University where she read Law while her peers demonstrated against her milk-snatching mother. She went on to qualify as a solicitor.

Close friends say that as a child she was denied her mother’s affection in favour of her twin brother Mark. ‘Mark was fawned over by her mother, and she resents that. She calls him ‘a prat’ in private.

‘When Carol’s drunk – and she can have one too many – she chats away about how she can’t stand him,’ says a friend. ‘This causes problems to her, because she blurts out things that she regrets later.’ A lot of friends point out that Carol enjoys a drink.

Her relationship with her mother has, inevitably, determined much of her life. She is acutely aware that being Your Know Who’s daughter is double-edged.

‘It’s difficult to grow up in the limelight and come out to be your own person, people don’t allow you to,’ reflects her friend Sally Nesbitt, eldest daughter of Lord Hunt of Everest. ‘And it’s difficult to build a career because you’re perceived as having made it before you’ve even begun.’ Failure is often gleefully recorded.

One recalls her untimely demise at The Daily Telegraph, her less than best-seller books, and colleagues who reckon her to be a bit of a plodder. ‘She is an extremely hard-working and tremendously professional journalist,’ counters her close friend and broadcaster Victoria Mather. ‘She’s wonderful at Loose Ends,’ offers the broadcaster Ned Sherrin who claims to carry ‘a great candle’ for her. ‘She’s super sporting and always suggesting ideas.’

Carol avoids being political but cannot shake off politics. She has said: ‘Just by my name I’ve polarised dinner parties when someone’s said, ‘I think your mother is the greatest thing since canned custard,’ or ‘She has ruined the country’.’

Mrs Thatcher can still divide dinner parties, but she is on the wane, and according to Carol’s friends, this will release her from the yoke. ‘She will soon be able to be her own woman,’ predicts a friend.

nHer own woman, is the good egg. Entertaining, direct, jolly, noisy, honest. People says she’s a terrific sport, that she’s ‘one of the lads’. She calls people ‘mate’ and is very much The Action Women.

‘She’s always off slaloming or down a coal mine,’ says Ned Sherrin. Good-egg stories about her abound. Once she was asked to blow into a windmill which turned out to be a soot-blowing machine. ‘A practical joke the Austrians like to play on you in the Alps,’ remarks friend Arnie Wilson, a skiing correspondent. ‘On another occasion I smashed into her skiing and knocked her flat. She brushed herself off and said, ‘It’s lucky I’m not a fragile blonde’.’

A good egg, but is she happy? ‘She doesn’t strike me as very secure,’ says one friend. ‘But given the situation with her mother she is coping very well.’

Macrobiotic and Buddhist former heroin junkie cum gay transvestite. Volatile, funny and charismatic befrocked singer, formerly of Culture Club and now of Jesus Loves You, back in the charts with After The Love. This is the George O’Dowd who turned into enfant terrible Boy George. ‘I call myself George on my records now,’ says the 30-year-old. ‘Other people always call me Boy George.’

Today he’s dressed for cycling in a Soviet waistcoat, scruffy 50p trousers (‘bargain-hunted from a French market’), exotic fake snakeskin sneakers and a glittery Lord Jaganagh (Krishna God) brooch. He’s all in beige, navy and black.

‘I don’t like to wear stage gear when I’m on my bike because it draws unnecessary attention,’ he says, unbelievably loudly, in a sarf London accent. (His voice ranges from camp and butch to posh, in his estimation. But the thing that comes across in his fortissimo voice now is that his adrenaline is pumping.) ‘A postman still called me a fackin’ queer this morning,’ George replied in similar vein.

George O’Dowd is getting into dressing up again, foreseeing a new wave of high camp. ‘I think drag queens are probably my favourite people,’ says this icon of drag queens.

He used to wear make-up and showy clothes all the time, for attention and approval. ‘Then I became trapped because I was famous and thought people couldn’t see me looking normal.’

He has a shaved head, dyed eyebrows and eyelashes, and penetrating eyes. He’s also a big guy, at 5ft 11in and with a figure, in the words of the song, that is less than Greek. ‘I’m always dieting and I love getting on my bike. In the morning I get a lot of neurotic calls, so I love whizzing out for a ride.’ Riding his bike, he says, is also good for his mind. Originally long-haired, he cut his locks when he went to court. The Sun printed that he had gone bald. ‘It was a real victim statement. I shaved my head and wore a camouflage jacket. Everyone said I looked as if I’d been in a concentration camp. My mum was really upset.’

Boy George likes it because he thinks it’s a spiritual look – and other people with similar hair-free styles acknowledge him in the street. ‘I don’t have strong features and I’ve got a big nose.’ (He says he would never undergo plastic surgery.) ‘But my face is quite good for make-up because it is quite plain. I think I have an elf-like quality,’ he laughs and crosses his arms. ‘But I don’t think it’s my looks that attract people to me. I think it’s because I’m quite vulnerable.’

Why doesn’t he want to be a man? ‘I think all men are part female. To really be a man, you have to be in touch with your feminine side . . . I just like the idea of androgyny and having no rules.’ Would he rather have been heterosexual? He smiles. ‘No, never. Some people are born gay and spend the rest of their lives wishing they weren’t. But it has never been an issue with me.

‘When I was a kid, I felt really isolated. When you are young and gay you have no role models, nothing to relate to, and you know there’s something odd about you. Your brothers are talking about girls. There was a period in my youth when I felt like an alien.’

The man who said he’d rather have a cup of tea than sex – ‘it’s more reliable. But I think sex is great,’ he says now – has a boyfriend of five years’ standing. ‘We’re totally monogamous and in love. Of course I look at other people. I look for someone I can like as a person and friend and have sex with. In my business I attract a lot of sycophants.’

George O’Dowd is the sort of forceful personality who brightens up the world. He talks a lot, gregariously. And he swears and laughs a lot – the former expressing what one senses to be quite a substantial inner anger, the part of him that is still fighting the world; and the latter done in a self-protective sort of way.

He has prodigious energy and a wonderful and quick wit. He’s no fool. Yet he often contradicts himself when talking about his feelings – he’s working his way out of his confusion with a plethora of therapies from healers to shrinks and yoga.

So what’s his image? ‘I think people reckon I’m odd, a fackin’ queer or interesting,’ he says. ‘I get a lot of people coming up to me and kissing me in the street.’ He laughs, ho ho ho.

‘People see me as a pillar of strength. But I have many sides – I’m vulnerable, lost and very insecure too. There’s nothing worse than putting across this strength and then, when they have penetrated you – whoops, wrong word – they discover the other aspects. I think it is better to be an open book.

‘When I’m angry, I shout. Yesterday I was at the swimming pool and these girls called me Girl Georgina – so I shouted really loud at them. If I feel I’ve got to say something, I just scream it. I’ve become less belligerent about things, though – I used to really scream and be hysterical and not listen to what people were saying. Now I try to listen and weigh things up. ‘I think I’m naive and ridiculously idealistic, quite loyal, passionate, I really care about human beings and I like meeting people. That’s what I found difficult about being a pop star, it cut me off. Now I think I’m a really normal person, one of the most down-to-earth pop stars there is.’ Being at the bottom of the pit with drug addiction helped him with his process of self-realisation. ‘I had to step outside of myself and reassess what I was doing to myself. Drugs weren’t the cause of my problems, just a symptom. As a child I wanted to be loved more – there were lots of us fighting for attention – and I grew up with the image of myself as not being really important.’

Who would he be if he were born again? ‘I am born again,’ – laughs- ‘not in a Christian sense. But I’ve had a lot of experiences and I try to learn from them. You can be born again every day if you learn something.’ And is he reincarnated? ‘I definitely believe that. But I don’t know who I was. Who I come back as depends on my actions this time round.’ So what are his faults? ‘I’m quite selfish. That manifests itself by my being quite belligerent about things and not wanting to have another person’s opinion.’ Is he putting on an act and performing for me? ‘Doesn’t everyone perform? Everybody is an act.’ He sounds hurt, and his voice lowers into a more sincere tone. ‘I don’t think there is any difference between what I do on stage and what I do in real life. The way I perform is very much me. I am a mixture of complications and simplicity. I am what you see.’

Energetic, menacing and original writer, director and actor appearing in Kvetch. Temperamental, extreme and talented madman cum tyrant and East End bovver boy made good. Clown or gangster. Attentive, courteous, private and peaceful man. Such are the Jekyll and Hyde images of Steven Berkoff. He’s wearing jeans and loose, black, zip-up sports shirt. ‘Clothes are of such a trivial nature that I’ve never considered bringing my mouth to express words to define my sartorial preferences,’ he says, writing down an idea on his notepad. ‘To give voice and value to what I wear suggests a monstrously trivial spirit.’

He obliges by admitting to a liking for high-definition tailoring, artistic workmanship, karate pants and the Parachute label. But by preference, he says, he fills his brain with the names of people who have written novels, poems and plays. That’s enough about clothes. ‘Oh f*** that,’ he replies, grinning a photocall smile. He often looks amused at himself; and sentences that might look pretentious in print are delivered with an irony and a twinkling eye.

He has chiselled features, prominent ears and nose, and eyes that stare fixedly – and sometimes madly – at a point mostly three feet from his nose, as if he’s on stage or there is no one else present. He is mesmerising, with an almost mystical quality, and his gestures float in space like a mime artist. Sitting with him is like watching a one-man show.

How does he see himself? ‘My looks are totally irrelevant to me. I just hope that I don’t look too ugly,’ he says, in gruff staccato tones that sound like a South African dalek. ‘Mainly, I like to look healthy rather than good.’ Certainly he radiates energy.

Does he think he’s ugly? ‘I don’t think so. But sometimes I look at photos of myself in the Press and think I look like some waxen head that is gradually melting. My inner spirit seems to be at defiance with my ageing. I’m in my fifties now, so I’ve scored well in terms of inner decay.’ When he found he was losing his hair 10 years ago, he’d comb it so that it wouldn’t look too threadbare. ‘But that meant I couldn’t use certain Tube stations where they had big wind tunnels.’ Then he sat in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem after directing Agamemnon in Hebrew, and shaved his head. ‘Suddenly I felt my face was revealed and I was naked again. I felt much more confident and liberated.’ His face is malleable and expressive; but he thinks it speaks of anxiety protected by aggression.

How does he see himself sexually? Sex is something about which he has written, thought and rhapsodised. ‘I don’t think about it too much. Like clothes, it’s something I don’t give words to. It doesn’t bother me one way or the other – I can be celibate for months on end, then I can be very active and lively. I’m not a slave to it and I think it highly overrated. ‘I think the promiscuous male or female is a bum. When I read about these guys in Hollywood crowing about their sex, I find it despicable.’ He talks in a poetic way, with vivid vocabulary, charge and passion. He uses his voice with a range of tones and inflections, as a marvellous instrument of expression. He is a soft man who has an intimidating image. He has great depth, and is a complex, powerful man who is strong, gentle, unconventional and fascinating. He is also candid and takes emotional risks.

‘I wouldn’t really define myself one way or the other,’ he says. ‘It’s so subjective. I think, to an extent, other people define us by their responses to us.’ OK, so he’s defined by the universe around him and his impact on that. But who is he when he’s alone in his Docklands warehouse flat? ‘I’m a private person, reflective, thoughtful, introspective, given to wild flights of imagination and daydreaming. I live very much as I did since my childhood in a world of my own where I escape through books and writing.’

He works on a book almost continuously. ‘It’s because I don’t know what else to do.

‘Of course I exist outside other people,’ he continues. ‘I suppose then I am defined in terms of the work I do. Very often I’m braver in my work than I am in life. At work I have the chance to get on stage and tell jokes in front of 500 people. At a dinner party, I probably couldn’t say a word.’ He talks seamlessly and makes eye contact briefly, from time to time. ‘I have a double side – I may be very extrovert, very free and give a lecture to hundreds of people, free associate, appear to be full of largesse, appetite, sensuality and passion. I am also a very political animal, but not doctrinally.’

Does he like himself? ‘Well,’ he coughs, ‘we all have periods of self loathing. We are divided selves. And we get schizophrenic when the two worlds drift away from each other. Yes, I love myself. I think I am wonderful, I am amazed at how wonderful I am . . .

‘And other times I am full of self loathing and think, ‘Oh my God, what have I achieved? How pathetic I am! A few scribbly words, and look at me! I’m an old man who still behaves like a teenage delinquent, and how insecure and socially inadequate I am, and what a limited range of friends and loves I have’. I sometimes feel so depressed I am ready to end it all.’ He worries that as he gets older his skills will corrode. He also has a tendency to be obsessive. ‘I get a problem that just goes round and round in my head like a record. In the Eighties I found everything bothered me: whether I was seeing people, entertaining, going out or having sex. Everything had a kind of devil attached to it.’

And he has been particularly beset by loneliness. ‘I once wrote that loneliness was like a disease. Maybe I have suffered from it to such a degree that it has created a kind of negative backwater of acid. Most of my work now is about loneliness.’ When he talks, he sounds as if he feels spiritually empty.

He is perceived as a writer who deals with the big passions, and particularly with anger. Does he think he intimidates people in life? ‘That is never deliberately done. I think people carry a response to me in their own minds before they meet me.

‘When they meet me, I am so unintimidating and gentle.’ People, he says, mistakenly confuse him with his work; his work is not a mirror image. He does, however, like his gangster image. ‘I don’t mind that either in life or film. The gangster is a rebel, risk-taker, non-compromiser and outlaw. He is an outsider.’

Some people think him rude. He gets heated and talks loudly about this. So what of his temperamental, difficult image? ‘I may have a little intolerance with people who are wilfully stupid, yuppified, Sloaney, precious and have not put their balls in an area where there is a danger of slicing them off (ie writing or on the stage). I might have shown a degree of impatience. But I can’t be rude. I feel for people. I’m a humanitarian.’ Is he a megalomaniac? ‘People think because you can do a lot of things you are a megalomaniac. I had to do all those things because I wasn’t employed. No producer ever took any of my plays. My plays were rejected, and still are.’

And is he a madman? ‘Madness is a kind of playfulness; a type of playing around with your mind and trying to be as varying as possible in whatever you do.’ He looks again into the middle distance. ‘We all have elements of madness in us.’

Druggy, loony and shaggy-looking Australian personality and former editor of Oz who was prosecuted at the Old Bailey for corrupting public morals. Enfant terrible of the swinging Sixties cum non-conformist journalist who has just written Playing Around. Militant, gregarious and energetic erstwhile hippy and leading figure in the London underground.

Is this the real Richard Neville?

We are sitting in the Hyde Park Hotel, but he wants to go and sit on the grass in the park. The last time he was there someone spiked his tea with acid. ‘Five minutes later I was outside Harvey Nichols having a cosmic experience.’

He’s wearing a large navy jacket, maroon shirt and khaki trousers. ‘If I’m in the Blue Mountains, where I live, I wear skungy old gear. If I’m getting out of bed just to write, I wear pyjamas all day.’ Clothes don’t loom large in his domestic rural Australian life.

He thrusts his hand in the air, speaking in antipodean accent and mellifluous tone. His was once the alternative voice of London. Richard Neville has another incarnation as a TV personality, ‘mouthing off about culture’. Then he wears ‘a kind of colourful jacket, shirt and pleated trousers’. He tries not to make the clothes intrusive between the idea and the audience.

He has full lips with a melting smile, big eyes, massive eyelashes, and a nose that is slightly broken and crooked; the lived-in face of quite a dishy former hippy. What does he see in the mirror?

‘Because of the wrinkles, I immediately see W H Auden.’ These lines appeared overnight to a man ‘with a Peter Pan temperament who is 49 years old but ready to become 50.’

He has been compared to an Apache Indian in looks. ‘I think I look like gnarled mallee root (a spindly native root). I’m not particularly attractive. I’ve never thought of myself as attractive.’

This particular mallee root sprouts hair that is long at the back. ‘I have an ingrained scruffiness no matter what I do. Occasionally I think I should buy a spray to do something about my hair. But the scruffy aura is inconquerable by me.’

Was he very into orgies? Wow! Into saving the world with a group grope? ‘I was into them in theory – but I always got the address wrong. I had a few group-sex experiences in the Sixties which I’m sure I enjoyed more than the other participants.’ He laughs uproariously. ‘Because they were mainly female.’

‘I enjoyed having the great fortune to make love to more than one woman simultaneously. But since my marriage, I’ve been faithful.’ He married in 1980, and the subject of monogamy and fidelity is part of his book Playing Around.

‘My wife was really firm about being monogamous. And I kind of drifted into fidelity. Besides, I live in the Australian bush. If I lived in New York my answer might be different. I am as lusty and full of desires as anyone else. But I don’t mess around as much as I used to . . . er, just kidding! I can see I have to be really careful here.’

He is a lovely gentle man, charming and straight-talking. He appears at ease with himself, contented and calm, the picture of health. He is also gregarious. ‘I think I’m reasonably spontaneous,’ he says, looking up to the ceiling.

‘I’m flexible, which is good. Disorganised, that’s bad. Bit lazy, bit selfish, opinionated. I keep trying to learn things about life, which is a good quality. And there’s a bit more of a marriage between mind and body than there has been in the past, probably due to yoga if that doesn’t sound too New Age.

‘I lack visual aesthetic sensitivity. I’m as truthful as one is able to be with oneself – let’s presume that on the whole my untruths are unconscious. I’m not as kind to loved ones as I should be – that’s a weakness. Not mad about cats and dogs because they screw up the environment.’ He laughs. ‘I’m trying to say things the English will dislike me for.’

He’s an unreconstructed hippy in some ways – but not one who lives in a commune spouting flower power. ‘The issues I’m interested in are ecological, environmental and spiritual, the legacy of the Sixties. But I don’t live in an intellectual equivalent of kaftans and platform heels. I don’t live in the Notting Hill of the mind.’

Is he non-conformist and unconventional? ‘I know there’s a lot in me that is conformist, just like my retired colonel father who tends to look at train timetables. Perhaps I was just being conventional by smoking joints and wearing crushed velvets,’ says this direct descendant of the beatniks who used to have posters of Che Guevara and pledge solidarity with the rioting students of Paris in 1968.

Did he do a lot of drugs? ‘People were so exasperated with me in London in the Sixties because they were all busy getting stoned and I was too busy going to the printer. I think marijuana opened a door for me that would have remained shut – I would have just stayed in rational organisational mode – but after a number of years I closed that door. I’ve never knowingly touched hard drugs. I don’t think smack is groovy.’

He thinks he is made up of a lot of different personalities. ‘Our heads are talk shows.’ Can he name the cast? ‘Ha ha ha one of them would be the conformist, retired colonel. He’s the one who likes achieving goals and wanted to finish this book.

‘Then there’s the flamboyant show-off. And, naturally, the little boy who didn’t feel he got enough love and generates the hyper sexual activity I’ve sometimes been associated with.

‘There’s definitely a woman there, she likes other women and enjoys gossiping over cups of tea. Then there’s the swashbuckling dare-devil fighter who fights to win if a battle comes up – he came out for the Oz trial. This is getting very self-indulgent and I can see the readers vomiting.’

He thinks his calmness is due to aging and yoga. ‘Yoga is good for calming you down without taking the fire from your belly. I know that’ll make city-bound intellectuals puke . . . I think it is fantastic to get passionate and inflamed about ideas and at the same time to know who you are. ‘The search to know who I am sums up everything about me.’

Caroline Phillips spent two days with the English rugby squad, watching the tension mount as Will Carling’s gentle giants gear up for tomorrow’s big game.

Wednesday, 1pm at the four-star Petersham Hotel (£110 a night for shared twin rooms), second home this week for the England rugger squad. On the reception desk a notice reads: ‘Signed Copies of Will Carling’s Captain’s Diary on sale’. Outside, a blue BMW has a side painted with the legend: ‘Mike Teague. Good luck in the Final.’

Having spent the morning training with the rest of the squad, Jeremy Guscott, a superstar and black model with a lovely manner, comes down whiffing of Paco Rabanne aftershave. He has kindly eyes, and looks relaxed all in navy and Docksiders. ‘I feel fairly relaxed,’ he concedes. Guscott, like the other players, wants the rest of Wednesday to be low key. ‘I’m going to see something called Commitments at the cinema, back at 10.30 and into bed with some hot chocolate.’

He’s sharing a room with wing Simon Halliday. ‘That’s the tradition. Only the bigger dudes, like the captain, get their own room,’ says Guscott. ‘I wouldn’t like a room on my own.’

A just-showered Rob Andrew walks past, in jeans and genial. So much for rugger bugger oafishness. Like the rest of the squad, he has a kind and calm mentality.

‘No nerves yet,’ he says. ‘You need to stay relaxed and detach yourself from the media excitement.’ Certainly there is a sense of camaraderie – these are guys who have been together as a group for two and a half years – and no real nervousness in the air. You could even read the mood as confident.

The players go to eat in the private dining room, a place where they sit in tables of eight and 10. ‘We like them to eat pasta and jacket potatoes, to put some of the petrol back in the tank,’ says team manager Geoff Cooke. Twenty-four hours before play, they are discouraged from eating red meat because of its long digestive process. Dean Richards, a policeman in life and a player who is ‘on the bench’ as they say (in the reserves), has managed his baked potato plus a melon, salmon, coleslaw and two large wedges of Black Forest gateau.

It’s 2.30. Will Carling, with dimpled chin and a red apple in one hand and a mobile phone in the other, is excited. But he’s showing signs of strain and pressure. He has non-stop interviews all afternoon and looks frazzled.

‘I’m going to get to bed by 10 tonight,’ he says. ‘I’ll just have a meal this evening and a chat.’ With whom? ‘With all the boys.’

Now the chaps are in the team room taking it easy and watching New Zealand versus Scotland. It’s a room full of balls and things to sign for charity. They’ll have to sign several hundred before Saturday. It’s 4.30. A lot of the players have said they wanted to play golf in the afternoon. But the light is going. Certainly, the lads have long periods of boredom. Some try to relieve it by going for a curry in the evening. And they all claim to miss their womenfolk.

It’s 7.30 and Jeremy Guscott, Richard Hill, Nigel Redman, Brian Moore and Rory Underwood are in a side room laughing and playing what looks to be Scrabble. ‘It’s called Take Three,’ explains Simon Halliday, who is also a stockbroker with Phillips and Drew. ‘You take three letters and try to make a word out of it, which means the game moves along very quickly.’ Upstairs, players are playing pool. They all say killing time is difficult in the last few days.

At 8.30 there is chicken and ice-cream for dinner in the hotel. Coach Roger Uttley is appearing on Sportsnight and also has a French television appearance. The players take the mickey, as they call it, and say the French will probably understand him more easily than BBC viewers.

Dean Richards, Gary Rees, Gary Pearce and Simon Hodgkinson go out for a Chinese meal. They talk about rugby. Most of the players go straight to their rooms after dinner. By 10 o’clock, the hotel is dead.

Thursday. No one appears until 7.45am. The change in mood is palpable. Tension has built up overnight. Today, they are training in a closed session. And then a dozen of them are going to Wentworth for a private game of golf.

It’s a free afternoon. Some will go back to do weight training. The rest will be lazing around the hotel. At 7pm, they have a meeting to go through what happened in the training session.

Simon Halliday appears at 8.30 with the FT under his arm. He went to his bedroom at 9.30pm to watch a thriller video, then to bed at midnight. ‘You don’t go to bed too early or you don’t sleep well.’

How does he feel? ‘OK. But you always feel tired in hotels.’ Jeremy Guscott says he watched Sportsnight and boxing on the television, and then went to sleep at midnight.

Will Carling walks past. He seems tense and distracted. The players have started to focus on the game. ‘This is the sort of build-up you’d expect,’ says Rory Underwood, who spent the latter part of the previous evening watching a film in bed and is now off to have some Alpen. He and fullback Jonathan Webb do not look happy.

Today, Friday, they have a similar day: breakfast, team meeting, training, lunch and afternoon free. The only difference is that things are even more tense. God, what will it be like tomorrow?