BRITT Ekland is playing her hardest ever role in her latest show: herself. The Swedish film sexbomb and Seventies’ Bond girl, later re-born as a comedy, thriller and pantomime actress and Grumpy Old Women sage on the British stage, is turning the spotlight on her life in An Audience With Britt Ekland.

Now 67, she will uncover the true Britt in a confessional show at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, tomorrow night.

“I’ve been talking about doing a one-woman show for five years now and was first offered the chance to do it at the Edinburgh Festival, but I didn’t realise just how nightmarish and difficult it would be, as it’s so tough talking about yourself when no-one is giving you questions to answer,” says Britt.

The show has moved on since that Edinburgh debut two years ago, the structure changed from 50 minutes of Britt revelations and reflections to a 55-minute first half and more chat for 25 minutes post-interval, finishing off with question-and-answer banter with the audience.

When there is so much life to cram in – her childhood in Sweden; her big break; her doomed marriage to Peter Sellers; her relationships with Lou Adler and Rod Stewart; her second marriage to rockabilly drummer Slim Jim Phantom of the Stray Cats; let alone such films as The Wicker Man and The Man With The Golden Gun – Britt was not satisfied with the show at first.

“I had two writers I had to fire and pay off. It’s probably the most expensive show I’ve had to do. It wasn’t written as I wanted,” she reveals.

Britt decided to hire the veteran actor, writer and raconteur Victor Spinetti, a debonair dab hand at the solo show, to direct her revamped show. “I knew Victor from when he worked with Peter [Sellers] and I’d worked with him on Run For Your Wife,” she says. “I realised we just needed me and him to sit down and talk about what should be in the show. He’s a fantastic director but he’s also the hardest task master. He screams at me... because he wants it to be right and knows how to get it right as he’s a master. It’s incredibly instructive to see how he works.”

Not that Britt demurs to Spinetti’s judgement at all times. “As the producer of the show as well, I have the right to put anything in, like putting in photos. Victor had said, ‘Don’t worry about photos; it’s the stories they want’, but I’m now including a new picture of Peter Sellers,” she says.

Whereas Spinetti is a humorist, Britt’s show is not in the style of an after-dinner speaker. “I’m not a comedian. Doing pantomime doesn’t make me a comedian. I don’t have those skills,” she says.

“You stand and talk about your life and there can be a deathly silence and maybe a little titter…but the silence isn’t always bad. There are things in there that people didn’t know, like how I spent my first night with Rod [Stewart]…”

…And are you going to tell me about that night right now, Britt? “No, of course I’m not!”

Drawing on the diaries that she has kept since she was 14, Britt believes that now is the right time for her to flick through the pages of her past. “What happens is that when you’re younger you really don’t have the weight or the answers to many of the questions that audiences will ask you, but now I’m relishing in my age and I can talk openly about anything,” she says.

Is that a Swedish characteristic, being open? “Oh no, we don’t like to open up at all, but it’s been fantastic for me to do it, because I’m secure in myself. I even have a picture of myself up there on stage naked in The Wicker Man. I’m not ashamed!

“And if people still fantasise about me hopping around in a bikini as Mary Goodnight [in Man With The Golden Gun], then fine.”

There was so much more to ask in this phone interview earlier this week but alas time was as tight a squeeze as that tiny bikini – 15 minutes and no more. Oh well, that leaves plenty for Britt to reveal in Scarborough.


• An Audience With Britt Ekland, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, tomorrow, 7.30pm. Tickets update: still available on 01723 370541.