THE BLUFFER'S GUIDE TO JOAN COLLINS

■ TODAY’S the day that actress Dame Joan Collins celebrates her 91st birthday, so here are some things you may not know..

❑ Born in Bayswater, London, on May 23, 1933, Joan Henrietta Collins is sensitive about her age. In her first autobiography, Past Imperfect, she wrote: “I was born sometime between the end of the Great Depression and the beginning of the war.”

❑ When it came to Second Act, her next volume of memoirs, there was no mention of the date, never mind the year.

❑ When Collins was a baby she was so pretty that her mother Elsa pinned a note to the tot’s pram saying: “Please do not kiss me.”

❑ Despite loving Joan and her sister, dad Joe wanted a son, so Joan would accompany him to Highbury to watch the Arsenal. She wore the team scarf but was bored rigid. Son Bill came along when Joan was 13.

❑ Joe was serially unfaithful. Joan once said: “Daddy did his bit for heterosexuality, as I have tried to do mine.”

❑ At 18 she was voted the most beautiful girl in England by a photographers’ association.

❑ When the press asked her father what he thought, he said: “I’m amazed. She’s a nice-enough looking girl but nothing special.”

❑ In November 1951 Joan was introduced to actor Maxwell Reed, 14 years her senior. In her first autobiography she claimed a few days later Reed drugged and raped her.

❑ Oddly, the assault story is missing from Second Act and she devotes just two lines to their courtship. They were married on May 24, 1952, but divorced four years later.

❑ In 1955 she was signed by 20th Century Fox and touted as the new Elizabeth Taylor.

❑ In 1963 she married singer and actor Anthony Newley and had two children.

❑ Marriage No 3 was in 1972 to US businessman Ron Kass, and they had a daughter together.

❑ Collins stripped for Playboy in December 1983 for which she was paid $100,000. She also went topless in The Bitch.

❑ In 1985 she married Swedish pop singer Peter Holm, a disastrous match. She refers to him as “a mixture of an obdurate dullard and calculating sociopath”.

❑ Her fifth husband is Peruvian Percy Gibson, 31 years her junior. She has said he is the best lover she has ever had. They have been together more than 20 years.

WHEN appearing as Alexis in Dynasty, Joan was paid less than co-star John Forsythe and sought a pay rise but was then told by producers the number of programmes she was in would be cut because she was too expensive.