A new biography of the film star Warren Beatty claims that he has been to bed with 12,775 women. The author adds, usefully, that the figure ‘does not include daytime quickies, drive-bys, casual gropings, stolen kisses and so on’.
Strange to relate, front-line reports from Beatty’s former lovers suggest that he favours a rather dated, Austin Powers approach. In her autobiography, Joan Collins recalls him saying ‘What’s new, pussycat?’ while one of his more recent loves, Madonna, claims that he pestered her for two weeks before she finally allowed him to kiss her.
‘He kissed her on the doorstep, after he dropped her off,’ records her biographer. ‘ “Houston,” he reportedly said, after kissing her, “we have lift-off.” ‘
One might have thought that ‘What’s new, pussycat?’ and ‘Houston, we have lift-off ‘ were the worst chat-up lines known to man, but I suppose it all depends on who is doing the chatting-up. To pick a name at random, it is hard to imagine the clinically obese Radio 1 disc-jockey Chris Moyles saying ‘Houston, we have lift-off’ to a woman and receiving anything other than a smack in the chops.
Woody Allen once said that if he believed in reincarnation, he would like to come back as Warren Beatty’s fingertips.
