Joan Collins says she has ‘no idea’ what women see in Boris Johnson

Joan Collins has revealed her thoughts about why Boris Johnson appeals to women and said she has “no idea” what they see in him.

The Dynasty star, 90, met the former prime minister while he was the editor of The Spectator, for which she wrote a regular diary column.

In a new interview, Collins was asked if she could articulate where Johnson’s appeal lies when it comes to romancing women.

“I have no idea,” she told The Times. “It’s not what women see in him. It’s what everybody sees. He’s very, very amusing and incredibly intelligent, with a terrible haircut.”

However, asked whether the Conservative politician had ever managed to charm her, Collins replied: “It takes a lot to charm me.”

Collins previously described her working relationship with Johnson as “quite happy” and described him as “very, very charismatic, very funny and very charming”.

While attending the Kite Festival in Oxfordshire last month, she told journalist Decca Aitkenhead: “So whatever you may think of him, that’s my opinion.”

Johnson has been married three times. His first wife was Allegra Mostyn-Owen, to whom he was married from 1987 to 1993. He was later married to Marina Wheeler from 1993 to 2020.

He is currently married to Carrie Johnson, whom he wed in 2021. He has seven children, including Lara Lettice, 29, Milo Arthur, 27, Cassie Peaches, 25, and Theodore Apollo, 23, who he shares with Wheeler; Stephanie, 13, who was born while Johnson had an affair with Helen Mcintyre; and Wilfred, three, and Romy, two, with Carrie. Johnson and Carrie are now expecting their third child together, which would expand his brood to eight.

The politician has also had a string of affairs with other women, including former Spectator columnist Petronella Wyatt, with whom he began a relationship while he was married to Marina and still working as the editor of the publication.

Elsewhere in her interview, Collins opened up about her own multiple marriages. The Time of Our Lives star has been married five times, to Maxwell Reed (1952-1956), Anthony Newley (1963-1971), Ron Kass (1972-1983), Peter Holm, 1985-1987, and Percy Gibson, who she is currently married to.

Of Reed, who was 31 when he met the 17-year-old Collins at the time, the film star has previously alleged that he raped her after spiking her drink on their first date at his apartment in London. In the BBC documentary This Is Joan Collins, she said she married him “out of shame”.

She told The Times: “I used to say to the girls at school, ‘I’m going to marry him one day’. What an idiot. I had the brains of this glass of water… But what the hell. I got rid of him.” Reed died in 1974 at the age of 55 from cancer.

Collins also described Newley as a “genius” and “fascinating”, but “flawed”. “He wasn’t able to be a good father or a good husband and he was absolutely bonkers about women,” she said.

Meanwhile, Kass left her with no money after their marriage came to an end. In her memoir, Collins described Holm as an “obdurate dullard and calculating sociopath”.

Reflecting on the men she had been with, Collins lamented: “I must be stupid. I don’t know. I mean, nobody appeared to be like that at the beginning. Peter Holm was charming and funny. He used to serenade me with his guitar.”

Collins met Gibson, a theatre producer, while working on a play that he produced in the US in 2000. She previously described him as the “most honourable man I’ve ever met”.

He is 32 years her junior and they married in February 2002. Asked why she had been historically romantically involved with younger men, Collins said: “I don’t know. Love has no limits.”

Collins has three children, including Tara and Alexander Newley, 59 and 57 respectively, and Katyana Kass, 51.