How the A-list stars became my friends
I NEVER dreamed I’d meet so many of the big-name movie stars I saw as a girl growing up in Portadown, but I got to interview them all on my TV shows.
Kirk Douglas, Charlton Heston, Howard Keel, Bette Davis, Audrey Hepburn and Leslie Caron, after whom I named my beloved daughter.
There were so many more, like Doris Day, Burt Lancaster, James Stewart, Rod Steiger and the cast of Dallas.
Joan Collins, even in her 80s, still looks magnificent. She has that Hollywood studio glamour at all times.
I’ve made wonderful friends too, like singer Julio Iglesias, who was wildly popular in 1982 with his huge hit Begin the Beguine. When first on the show he had an entourage of 14 and was in a long mink coat. Julio and wife Miranda Rijnsburger invited us to their homes in Miami and Dominican Republic where every conceivable luxury was on offer. Later, when his twin girls were 15, they came to boarding school in England and Miranda asked if I would be a local guardian. I was delighted.
In 2012 we celebrated the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee with mutual friends. Michael Caine was there with Joan Collins, Roger Moore, Cliff and Susan George. We couldn’t get a cab home so Michael suggested we wait in a cafe, along with Bill Wyman of the Rolling Stones. You should’ve seen customers’ reactions as we slurped our tea! Then we took a red bus down the King’s Road with Cliff leading everybody singing, “We’re all going on a summer holiday.”
In 1982 I met Neil Diamond and introduced him to Cliff at a private dinner in a hotel suite. After dinner, the singing started and didn’t end until 4am. Reception got a call to “stop those idiots singing”. I got to know Billy Connolly through a friend who, at the height of the Troubles, persuaded a reluctant Billy to visit Northern Ireland.
Of course, there was a bomb scare: “Get under the table or get out!” someone screamed. Billy crawled under a table on his hands and knees, quaking. Undeterred, a fan approached also on hands and knees, and asked for an autograph. I wouldn’t like to repeat Billy’s retort. And so to Terry Wogan. There was real banter between us on Radio 2 with Terry calling me Hot Lips Hunniford, GBH and Gus Honeybun.
In the early days of Children in Need we dressed up as Sonny and Cher and had a great laugh doing it.