Jerry's monologue on her revival

Jerry Hall is not one bit bothered about the whole cellulite thing. But after I mention the offending paparazzi shot (Saint Tropez beach, dimply thighs) for the third time, she leaps up from her circle seat at the New Ambassadors Theatre and hitches up her Christian Dior dress at the back to reveal a smooth, tanned, model thigh that is quite rumple free.

"Do I have it? Maybe ah doo, liddle bit, liddle tiny bit of fat, maybe. I don't care. I thought it was a bit funny, you know. You have to laugh." And she does, a girlish semi-cackle that's in unexpected contrast to that famously deep, drowsy, Texan voice that can slow down so far it sounds like she's going under.

Jerry is better in the flesh. Her skin is glossy and golden - "I use olive oil all over" - and she has glittering blue eyes and a smile that I can't believe isn't advertising Pearl Drops, all curly lipped and wide and bright. In the 15 seconds it took her to slink down the passage to the stage door, swinging along in her short, black dress and scarlet cardigan, she was wolfwhistled, twice.

We're here, in the theatre, because Jerry is performing in The Vagina Monologues, but really, of course, because Jerry is endlessly fascinating, with her mane of home-dyed, mucky-blonde hair, her relationship with Mick Jagger, her Southern-girl style, her 30-year modelling career. Does she feel the pressure to stay the perfect size 10 for ever? "No, I don't. I feel incredibly lucky to be so happy in my skin, and lucky to not mind about getting older. It's a spiritual thing, heh heh!" What about plastic surgery? (Jerry favours a cantilevered dÈcolletage, but her chest size is 34a, so it's mostly padding.) "I would never do that, nooo, I just wanna be healthy and live a really long time and look after my grandkids."

Jerry Hall has become a kind of survivor role model in the manner of Princess Diana, the lovely girl who deserved better, the outsider who brought grace to a thoroughly difficult role and, in the process, joined the very short list of women who are loved by men and women alike. She was once described in a broadsheet newspaper as "an inspiration to wives everywhere".

Best of all, two years ago she left Mick Jagger and achieved the almost impossible: an amicable divorce and a personal revival. She's played Mrs Robinson in The Graduate - to mixed reviews, OK, but there are plenty of others still interested. She has a Broadway show in the pipeline, a part in the next Merchant Ivory film, Merci Docteur Rey, and she's enrolled on an Open University course. I wonder if the latter has anything to do with the drubbing she received when she was made a judge on the Whitbread panel in 1999? Jerry looks puzzled: "I don't think I got a drubbing." Well, there was a certain amount of bad press referring to the dumbing-down of literary prizes. "I didn't see that," she says flatly. "I don't feel I have to prove anything," and then she laughs one of her regular crackling laughs, just to show there are no hard feelings. Jerry has said in the past that she "doesn't remember bad things for long", plus, of course, there was the one about being "a lady in the parlour, a cook in the kitchen and a whore in the bedroom". Around her, you are conscious that being a woman is a vocation, a responsibility tied up with looking good, pleasing everyone, and showing good manners at all times. Someone, at some point, back in Mesquite, Texas, before she left to be a model at 15, said: "Jerry, don't bore; pretty and vivacious is what we like."

Her speech is peppered with references to how lucky and happy she is. She smiles all the time, even when you are irritating her, and laughs on the beat, not because anything is particularly funny, but because she knows it lightens the mood, introduces a note of girlishness. You can't help feeling that after twentysomething years of living here, her Southern accent remains undiluted all the better to say: "I add-awe comedy - it's instant gradification", and follow through with a mane-tossing, throat-baring laugh that reminds you, if you're old enough, of the yowling vamp in the Bryan Ferry Stick Together video. Jerry is a fabulous, glittering pro.

Has she changed, from the Texan girl who was brought up to please her man no matter what? She pouts and gazes into the distance. "My mum used to say, 'Well, at least he's a good provider'." She laughs one of her more ironic laughs. It's well-documented that Jerry's father, a long-distance lorry driver, was violent and abusive, and Jerry and her four sisters lived in fear of him. But for Jerry, who is said to be worth £30 million in her own right, being provided for wasn't enough. The last straw was the revelation of Luciana Morad's pregnancy, and, after 23 years and four children, she filed for divorce in 1999. "Yeah, I changed. I thought one day he was going to grow up, but [from now on, let's just assume that Jerry laughs like punctuation] y'know, everyone has a time when they say, 'I can't do this any more'."

Despite Mick attempting to deny the validity of their Balinese marriage ceremony, Jerry showed dignity and a determination to put her family first. It was a period that benefited her hugely, not least because there is now the frisson of unfinished business, the sense that what they have is better than ever. In July, Mick gave her a Peugeot 206 cabriolet for her 45th birthday. It's that kind of arrangement.

Recently a lot has been written about how, after divorce, women thrive and men suffer. "I think he's having a hard time," she says, suddenly serious. "I mean, he's an addict."