Tea with Barbara Cartland – from ‘Daily Mail’

Miss Cartland, after a cursory glance of welcome, announced it was obvious my sex life was not what it should be and thrust little drums of pills into my cupped hands with orders to report on their success.

Such foibles however are a small price to pay, as every time the coral lips parted there was a publishable quote that trod a fine line between eccentricity and nuttiness, with an italics rate to rival Mrs.Thatcher.

Barely had I been motioned to a settee than the rules of play were dictated in that staccato fruit punch voice and a promise extracted there will be absolutely no questions on The Wedding, an affair which had become ‘just too, too tiresome.’

“And you can’t mention the contents of the house, only the colours,” she added. “I promised the police. Burglars, you see. Trouble today is they kill before they leave.”

But like a good meringue, the crust is thin and you’re soon wallowing in her soft centre for publicity as she threads quote after quote like pearls on her five-row choker. Let it be said at once that those who might snigger at the pill-popping, honey-gulping, virginity-plugging lifestyle being as dated as a diary, here was a creature entering her eighty-first year looking the proverbial dog’s dinner in a pale blue dress which matched the walls, the eyelids and the earrings, (“Turquoise. Used to be a very cheap stone. But what’s cheap nowadays?”), who nevertheless appears to have found the secret of youth.

Turning on a tape recorder, she mentioned inaccuracies and her solicitor in one sentence and shyly lowered the lawn-rake lashes which threatened your attention.

“False,” she announced with the only understatement of the afternoon, all other utterances being titled, virginal or new business ventures.

“I had septic tonsils, you see.” (You will, you will). “Cried all through my first honeymoon, poor man. Mascara stung my eyes so I switched to boot polish. Meltonian actually. Quite safe – beeswax. I used to have enormous eyes then – they used to say Barbara has headlights – but as you get older, your eyes get smaller and I couldn’t bear that, so now I wear false lashes. Eyelure make them just for me, especially long. I don’t put them on for you, you understand, I wish to look like this. You age downwards, that’s why I’m so against slimming. At fifty you have a choice – keep your face or your figure and it’s much better to keep your face. If I dieted now at eighty, I’d have lines on my face. When I’m photographed, I don’t want character, I want a chocolate box. Eyes and mouth – a chocolate box. Do you understand?”

As she adjusted the Pekinese, your mouth forms a question but it’s not that kind of interview.

“Let me give you the statistics first as everyone gets them wrong. I’m the biggest selling author in the world.”

“But what about Harold Robb – ?”

“No, no, they’ve got it wrong. Fault of my press release – it’s out of date. I’ve sold over two hundred million. I write so quickly, you see. I hold the record for the number of books written in a year five years running. Last year it was twenty four. Let’s have tea.”

It’s taken on a mahogany table long enough for raised voices, under which a black Labrador, a gift from Mountbatten, was already having his off Royal Worcester.

“Eat, eat, it’s all for you,” she ordered, waving across the plates of meringues, shortcake and brandysnaps, well aware a full mouth couldn’t ask about The Wedding.

“D’you know, no one ever made an improper suggestion to me? I had forty nine proposals before I accepted and then I had to go and…..”

There was a brief pause to switch her eyes to dipped beam as she described the first failed marriage and the messy divorce.

“Rich man who didn’t want to give me any of the money. Usual thing. I won the case, but it left me penniless. I married again, he was quite well orf, but I was determined then to have my own money. Now eat while I’m telling you this.”

The meringues took us through her campaigns, (For: virginity, pensioners, nurses, gypsies and silk cami-knickers for WRACS. Against: promiscuity, Valium, fluoride and Bernard Levin), whilst the brandysnaps half-drowned her denial of taking eighty pills a day.

“That was just a thing to make the Press happy. Thanks to tremendous pressure from me, we now have optimum dosage and I’m gradually getting down the numbers. I wouldn’t look the way I do today without them. Mummy took them all and lived to ninety-eight. Lord Mountbatten said the reason he made better speeches was all due to Barbara’s pills. I had a wonderful letter from Boycott saying it was entirely due to me that he was a good cricketer……..”