Twiggy: no going back

There are various myopic men hanging around the stage door of the Theatre Royal in Newcastle. Most are holding small photos of a blonde woman with big eyes. They like to show them to each other. "That's her in The Boyfriend," says one. "This is her on the cover of Pin-Ups," says another. Suddenly, the door opens and out steps a tall, slim, attractive woman. Her hair is wrapped up in a bandana, gipsystyle, and she is wearing a pink T-shirt and blue jeans. "Hello, fellas," she says, and at the same time she turns around and all you can focus on really are her big blue round eyes. Twiggy, it seems, is among us.

I wonder what she feels about having these fortysomething men frottaging up to her when her back is turned? I swear to God that the man with the very thick glasses was squirming with pleasure when she signed his programme notes to Mrs
Warren's Profession, the play in which she is starring.

"Oh, I don't mind," she says over a bite to eat. "You can't be as well known as I am without expecting that. I've got a bit of time. I give them a bit of time."

She's very up front like that. She can be rather giggly - she has a foghorn of a laugh when she's in full swing - but she's also pretty tough underneath. I would guess that she has her boundaries pretty well formed and she doesn't let much get in beyond that. This tough edge isn't something many people see. She masks it very well by doing a lot of shrugging of shoulders and "ain't life a laugh" stuff - her Neasden accent is still there. For example, she is happy to talk about her "dear friend" Sir Peter Hall, the director of the play, for as long as you like. "He's very clever and wonderful and I could watch him all day and learn so much from him." But then it turns out she has known Peter Hall for years, ever since she met her second husband, the actor Leigh Lawson, 13 years ago.

"Leigh was performing in a play and Peter was directing," she explains. And when Lawson and Twiggy were getting married, Sir Peter was one of the few people to know about it. "We wanted to make it private. But Peter asked me to be in a play and the dress rehearsal was on our wedding day, so I had to turn him down. Then he turned up at our house saying, 'Why have you said no?' so we had to tell him. Anyway, you don't turn down a director as good as that twice."

There's a lot of "I don't know how I made it but yet here I am" about her. Underneath it all, though, she has a clear idea of her own worth. She'll happily talk about her acting and her tapdancing and her cosmetics range, the Twiggy Skincare Collection ("I'm very keen on natural substances"), her new CD, and her charity launch in Trafalgar Square on Thursday (she will be encouraging people to make a difference by volunteering), but when I ask her about her brief stint hosting This Morning last year she clams up. "I decided not to talk about it then and going to talk about it now," she says. It was a bit of a disaster.

Twiggy, along with Coleen Nolan, was brought in to replace Richard and Judy. But she was criticised for being wooden and was, four weeks into a three-month contract, pretty much sacked. "Well, everyone focused on me," she says, "and no one thought about who was behind the show. It was interesting that she left pretty quickly after me." The "she" in this instance was Maureen Duffy, then head of daytime ITV. "But I don't regret the experience," says Twiggy. "If I'd turned it down I would've always wondered what it would've been like."

It's a shame it didn't work out. At 53, the former Lesley Hornby still looks great and people do certainly recognise her, if not identify with her. She has always been a marvellous icon. There are photographs of her that define the Sixties with her Leonard haircut and spidery eyelashes. I remember meeting the late designer Ossie Clark many years ago - his retrospective opens at the V&A tomorrow - and he was still talking about her, even though she'd given up modelling decades before. "The most beautiful woman in the world," was what he called her. Twiggy loved fashion, he said, and was the best model ever, ever, ever.

"I did love fashion!" she says. "At school I was terribly insecure. I was very thin and flat-chested. I wasn't good at anything but I did love fashion. I used to dream about being a designer, so when I was a model I really enjoyed the clothes. I used to like going to Biba."

The Sixties were a wild time for pretty much everybody - the pop world, the fashion world, the art world - and Twiggy was in all of them. The photograph, by her long-term lover Justin de Villeneuve, of her and David Bowie on the cover of Bowie's Pin

Ups, looking cool, insouciant and, frankly, spaced-out, defined the era. She doesn't really want to talk about the Sixties. "Oh, it was such a long time ago. People always refer back to then as if my career since hasn't meant anything, and I'm far more proud of what I do now than what I did then. Anyway, I was a sensible girl," she says. "I worked really hard. For four years, until I was 20, I was a model and I was travelling and making money. I had a great time and I loved it but I wasn't a big party-goer."

She attributes this level-headed attitude to her father, Norman. "He was from Bolton. He was a very good man." Her mother, Nell, however, had what was then described as a "nervous disposition". "I think she was postnatally depressed after she had me. In those days people really didn't do much but say, 'Come on, dearie - buck yourself up.' It really affected her and sometimes she used to go away to homes and things."

Consequently, Twiggy was brought up mainly by her sister, Shirley, who was 15 years older than her, and her father. "I always wondered what drugs they did give my mum. I don't trust anything like that. I really don't think I'd ever be Botoxed. People say that venom disappears but where does it go? It has to go somewhere."

She was always pretty commercially minded. When she was 19, she and de Villeneuve set up Twiggy Enterprises. Surely she was one of the first models to market herself as a brand? "Well, it wasn't my idea to have car stickers that read 'Forget Oxfam - Feed Twiggy' on them!" she says. "I was really fed up about that weight thing. As a kid I used to stuff my bra with tissue. I still get blamed for models being anorexic but I've always eaten like a horse!" In the past, though, she's got a bit cross with de Villeneuve for suggesting that he "made Twiggy". "It's rubbish," is what she has said to that. Her face hardens when I ask her about the role of her former lover. "I was very successful, very early," she says, "but a lot of it was down to becoming the Face of The Year in the Daily Express in 1966. And Ken Russell put his neck out for me to be in The Boyfriend, so I feel I owe him a lot."

She and de Villeneuve split up in the mid-Seventies when Twiggy met, and married, actor Michael Whitney. It was a disaster. He was an alcoholic. "I didn't know that though," she says. They split up and he went off to New York and she stayed in London with their daughter, Carly. For a while she wouldn't let her exhusband see his daughter, but when he was drying out she let Carly, aged five, go and stay with him. He then had a heart attack in front of her and died over lunch in New York. "I can't say anything about that apart from the fact that it was a dreadful thing for Carly to go through and it was a long time ago." Carly is now 29 and an animator. She lives with her step-brother, Ace (Lawson's son by his former wife, Hayley Mills). "They are closer than most brothers and sisters," she says.

Despite her general reticence she's at her most genuine when she talks about her daughter and her husband - they've been married for years. She's very much in love with him. "When I first met him I thought he was very attractive, but then I thought 'Actor? No way. Bad news.' But we kept seeing each other and slowly, slowly I began to trust him." Trust is an issue for her. "I'm a chancer," she says. "I think you should take all the opportunities offered to you but I also like the fact that Leigh looks after me. That's what I like. I really do."

This Thursday Twiggy will be publicising CSV Make a Difference Day (0800 284 533). Her play moves to the Theatre Royal Brighton from today. Her album, Midnight Blue, is out next Monday.