Lynn Barber has seen the lot. Across six decades as a celebrity interviewer, she's navigated a death threat*, a stand-off with a star best known for playing an amiable TV doctor and a wild animal at the dinner table. Now, a sticky conversation with Joan Collins and a run-in with the actress's "dragon" PR has led Barber to a stark showbiz realisation.
Barber tells Sky News: "I'm not up for celebrity interviews any more." She goes on: "I've turned down a lot of ideas I've been sent. It was rare for me to agree to do Joan Collins, and it was only because Tracey [Emin] said we'd get on so well, and then we didn't.
" Emin's premonition that Barber and Collins would "get on like a house on fire" failed to produce the anticipated warm reception. Barber explains: "[Joan] had this dragon PR with her. I asked my first question - something about turning 90 as she was just writing a book about just that - and the PR said: 'You can't ask about her age'.
"I thought, this is just madness. I was in a foul temper, and I thought, I can't do this anymore." Dubbing interview requests "to plug a specific something or other" as "just a bore", Barber says a "very sticky conversation" with Collins ensued, with "people saying things like, 'Why don't you ask about [Joan's] beauty routine?'.
Barber says she later called her editor "practically in tears" telling them "I can't write it. I can't face writing it". Advertisement True to her word, no interview with Collins has ever seen the light of day.
Imag.