■ TURKEY’S

back on the menu this Christmas at the home of Dame Joan Collins’s daughter, Tara Arkle.

Last year, the writer, 59, tried to please her vegetarian children by forgoing festive poultry. The daughter of Joanie’s second husband, late actor Anthony Newley, admits her decision ‘did not go down well with my husband, who felt short-changed and hungry on Christmas Day’.

She says of writer Nicholas Arkle: ‘There’s nothing like a nut roast to leave a dry taste in your mouth, which even a badly cooked turkey cannot mimic. My husband will never again entertain a veggie Christmas.’