‘I thrive on being with my friends... company and Salah are what I’m missing right now’
FANS of the new series of TV favourite The Real Marigold Hotel will be all too familiar with Dame Zandra Rhodes. With her trademark pink hair, rainbow wardrobe and zany jewellery, she is the life and soul of the party as she mingles with fellow celebrities. But what no one knew, least of all Zandra, 79, was that she was just a few days away from having to break off filming to dash to the deathbed of her long-term partner, the movie producer Salah Hassanein.
She was three weeks into the location shoots in India with former Bond girl and film star Britt Ekland, also a close friend; Dragon’s Den star and entrepreneur Duncan Bannatyne, TV comedian Paul Chuckle, cricket commentator Henry Blofeld, EastEnders actor John Altman, actress Susie Blake and singer Barbara Dickson.
Cast and crew were about to head off to the Himalayan foothills when, the veteran designer reveals exclusively, she had some grave news.
“Salah had not been well for many years and we’re both workaholics so we often did our own thing,” she explains.
“Before I left for India he was going in and out of consciousness and I said to his doctor, ‘Do you think it will be safe for me to do it?’ and they assured me that it would be.
“When I was there I had a special Indian cell phone and I made sure that they could get hold of me the whole time. Three weeks into the trip I received a call to say he’d taken a turn for the worse.”
AS THE rest of the group set off for Rishikesh, Zandra started her mercy dash to California where the couple had lived together for years. “They said they weren’t sure if he was going to last but I got back in time to see him and he was alive for another three weeks,” she says quietly.
“He died just days after his 98th birthday at our beach house in Del Mar, San Diego.
“He was 18 years older than me. He had been bedridden for years and he gradually deteriorated. If it wasn’t for modern medicine then he wouldn’t have lived for as long as he did and I felt that the last two years of his life were not worth living.
“He hated hospitals and he had carers at his house at the end and thankfully passed away peacefully.”
The couple, who met in New York at a charity dinner, were together for 30 years.
“He was originally from Egypt and worked his way up from nothing, from an usher in the cinema to become president of United Artists and then Warner Brothers and he expanded it all over the world,” says Zandra.
Although Salah had children from a previous marriage, Zandra, one of the UK’s most recognisable and best-known fashion designers, reveals she was too old to start a family when they met.
“Do I have any regret about not having kids? Well it only happens if you have got the right relationship at the right time. It had passed me by before I had the right kind of relationship and I was too old in the end,” she says.
“But it was a harmonious relationship. I was lucky in that I met someone who always worked and he didn’t always notice that I was working too.
“He liked me doing my own thing. We shared the beach house in Del Mar and I went backwards and forwards to the UK.
“However, I’m back here permanently now and I can’t even go back and finish packing up because of the coronavirus. “I have to say I am happy to be home. I don’t miss a certain Mr Trump – he is dangerous – although I do miss the Californian beaches.” Currently living above her studio in the normally bustling south-east London area of Bermondsey, Zandra – whose eponymous brand last year celebrated its 50th anniversary and has designed for a host of famous faces, including Princess Diana – can’t shake off the feeling of loneliness. “I’ve got more than enough to keep me occupied. I have no gardener or cleaner and I have so many work emails to look at about my future collections.
“But I thrive on being with my friends – and company and Salah are what I’m missing right now.”
Zandra, a former contestant on Celebrity Masterchef, adds: “I’ve held the most amazing dinner parties over the years with the likes of Lulu, Britt Ekland and Bianca Jagger.
“But right now I wish I could be cooking a dinner party for all those lovely people that I met on The Real Marigold Hotel.”
Zandra may be turning 80 this year but confesses that she is terrified of retiring.
“I don’t want to be a little grey-haired old lady.
“But on the other hand I am hoping that I’m not set in my ways. That’s one of the reasons why I took part in The Real