Dame Joan lets rip at daughter for taking new hubby’s name
THROUGHOUT five, sometimes turbulent, marriages, one thing has remained constant for Dame Joan collins: her name.
Now, the 83-year- old actress is furious with her daughter tara for taking the surname of her husband, something Joan has never done.
singer and broadcaster tara, 53, married her second husband, publisher Nick Arkle, last summer and apparently now styles herself tara Arkle.
Dame Joan fumes: ‘ she changed her name — and I didn’t really agree with that.’
Until her wedding, she was known as tara Newley, taking the surname of her father, the actor and singer Anthony Newley, who was Dame Joan’s second husband.
‘I’ve never changed my name,’
emphasises the Dynasty star, whose late father, Joseph Collins, was a showbusiness agent with clients including the Beatles, sir tom Jones and Dame shirley Bassey.
‘if you are a career woman, which tara is, you’re not saying: “i’m going to give up my career, marry peter Brown and be Mrs Brown.”
‘i think there’s something slightly subservient about that.’
Her comments follow the row last month after i reported that Nick Clegg’s lawyer wife, Miriam Gonzalez Durantez, publicly criticised the organisers of international Women’s Day for having the temerity to send her an invitation addressed to ‘Mrs Clegg’.
this week, veteran feminist campaigner Harriet Harman revealed that she had no photographs taken, cake or even guests at her 1982 wedding, in a bizarre bid to fight against what she described as ‘the patriarchy’.
Mrs Clegg is not the only one angered by the wording on an envelope.
‘i’ve made a big name for myself as a dame — but i still get letters addressed “Dear Miss Collins”,’ wails Joanie. ‘And i’ve been a dame for nearly two years now!
‘i’m not blowing my own trumpet about it — but it was huge.’
Dame Joan’s current marriage, to percy Gibson, is her most enduring, at 15 years.
When she wed the theatre producer 32 years her junior, friends worried she wouldn’t last the pace.
she quipped: ‘if he dies, he dies.’