Jerry hits her first High note

Jerry Hall will be singing and dancing in the West End next month when she makes her musical theatre debut. As her former husband Mick Jagger leads the Rolling Stones on tour across the U.S., Jerry's getting into shape to perform eight shows a week at the Shaftesbury Theatre, starting on 1 October.

She will be appearing in Cole Porter's High Society, based on Philip Barry's stage hit, about the peculiar mores of the upper class on America's east coast before the war in 1938.

Jerry has the part of Mrs Seth Lord (mother of the show's heroine, Tracy Lord), whose philandering husband returns for his daughter's wedding. Jerry admitted that she and Mrs Lord have something in common.

"It's about love and forgiveness and I know a lot about that," she told me. "She forgives her husband just the once - while I've forgiven my husband, or rather ex-husband, many times," Jerry said, referring to the many dalliances that Jagger had during their two decades together, ten of them as husband and wife.

"Mother Lord is very centred, but you have to remember that this is set in 1938 and it was a gentler time."

Producer Mark Goucher arranged for her to see Ian Talbot's Regent's Park Open Air Theatre production of High Society when it was on tour. "I love the songs and as soon as I saw it I agreed," she said.

Jerry will join main cast members Graham Bickley, Katherine Kingsley and Paul Robinson for rehearsals on 12 September.

Singing coach Penny Harvey Piper has been working with Jerry for several weeks. "She has given me a lot of confidence and I'm hitting the notes and, as you know, music is a big part of my life," she added, with a knowing laugh.

Jerry was particularly amused to learn that one of the numbers she'll be singing, with other cast members, is Let's Misbehave. "It's great fun being on stage. I had fun in The Graduate and I'm looking forward to doing eight shows a week till February."

While still in the show, Jerry will take a role in the film Are You Ready For Love?, in which she'll play a marriage guru. Then there's her TV show Kept, which begins on VH1 on Sunday.