Joan Collins races through life as if tomorrow will never come. As she heads towards her 71st birthday Prime Time's MEL WALLINGTON asks for just a few of her secrets.

JOAN Collins is a star in every sense of the word. With a string of films to her name, and as many stage plays, this mother, grandmother and tireless charity worker has also managed to find time to write10 books, to get married five times and to spend eight years starring in one of TV's most popular dramas of the 1980s - Dynasty.

In just eight days' time Joan Collins will be celebrating her 71st birthday bang in the middle of a gruelling stage tour as she stars in Alan Melville's comedy of errors Full Circle.

It is a life lived at a pace which would leave many a younger person struggling to keep up, but for Joan Collins it is a way of living she would not swap for the world.

Her tiny frame is tucked into a red leather skirt-suit and she is sporting a face of expertly-applied make-up as she extols the virtue of the play which visits Bath's Theatre Royal in June.

The play follows the exploits of best-selling novelist Denise Darvel, who admits to her children that the good-looking man in the mantlepiece portrait is not actually their father.

With four failed marriages behind her and a string of successful novels to her name, the parallels between the star and her character are hard to ignore. Collins is currently married to Percy Gibson, a man more than 30 years her junior and Full Circle's company manager.

So what has Collins learned about men through the years and what are her tips for a lasting relationship?

"Some of them are wonderful and some of them are horrible," she said. "You can't generalise about men, just like you can't generalise about people.

"Just being each other's best friend, sharing everything, being someone's partner and being compassionate. I think friendship is incredibly important. My husband and I started off as friends."

The couple are celebrating their second anniversary this month.

She said: "This will be the third time Percy and I have worked together and we get along brilliantly.

"For our anniversary my daughter is coming up from Somerset to stay and we might have a quiet dinner together, but Percy will be working very hard."

Stressing how much she enjoys treading the boards she said: "I think comedy is more difficult than drama because you want to get something back from the audience.

"I am used to all of them - film, TV and the stage. On stage you have to keep it fresh constantly but with TV and film you only have to keep it fresh for five takes or whatever it is."

Collins made her acting debut more than 60 years ago at the age of nine in a production of Ibsen's A Doll's House.

"I came into this business to be a stage actor and that is what I did."

Collins looks high-maintenance and is positively dripping in star quality but is very relaxed about how she manages to look so good

"I don't worry about it very much," she said nonchalantly. "I think I am quite diligent about eating good food, the right food. My mother insisted I ate broccoli and not too many sweets. I work out three times a week when I'm in London and I believe in taking care of my skin."

With many film, TV and writing credits to her name, including her forthcoming novel, Misfortune's Daughters, and the possibility of a diary of experiences from the Full Circle tour ("I'm a Gemini. I'm multi-faceted."), what has given Collins the most professional pride?

"I'm most proud of having kept a career going. My father told me it would all be over by the time I was 25. I think I am most proud of being a survivor and being able to do these terrific plays with this wonderful director and wonderful production company."