BRITT Ekland, a lover with stamina, once stayed in bed with her soon to be ex-husband drummer Jim McDonnell for two days and nights. Before him, she slept with Peter Sellers (whom she married), Lou Adler, Rod Stewart, Warren Beatty, Ryan O’Neal, Lord Lichfield and George Hamilton. Now she’s written a bonkbuster, Sweet Life, which echoes her own life and is about a Swedish air hostess who marries an English Lord who dies and leaves her penniless and ready for adventure… But Britt’s real life story is of a beautiful woman who protects her vulnerability with an iron will and compulsive need to control.

Britt, 51, is a consummate professional, posing expertly in nearly fluorescent green Versace jacket, tiny skirt, high heels and smiling winningly with enormous eyes and shining capped teeth. She’s a perfectionist, an obsessive and a former bulimic. ‘Almost everyone in the Seventies was,’ she says. ‘They’d eat loads of sweets and throw up or have a huge dinner and go, ‘aaaggghhh, this is disgusting’, and chuck it up.’ These days she never eats breakfast or lunch. ‘I can go for days without food.’ She’s now an exercise-aholic. ‘It’s like my security blanket,’ she says. ‘Last year I was running four miles a day then doing three hours of Polates exercises, then weightlifting.’ Her watch is set 20 minutes fast – as, apparently, are all the clocks in her home – which makes her ruthlessly efficient. If she comes in the door and an object is an inch out of place, she cannot take her coat off until she’s ordered it.

She looks tremendous, although she stays awake at night thinking she should be thinner. She’s chopped her hair, to stick up two fingers (which she does, literally) at people’s expectations. She hasn’t had plastic surgery for 12 years, since she did the bags under her eyes. She’s no fluffy blonde, no fool, has a sharp sense of humour and at the beginning of the interview interlocks her fingers tensely, shakes almost imperceptibly and crosses her arms and legs tightly. She’s ornamental and wears a ring even on her thumb. I notice it when she flicks her hand dismissively at the waiter.

But say ‘Britt’ and people think ‘sex’. ‘I enjoy sex and I’ve had wonderful sex,’ she says. ‘But it’s more difficult for me, Britt Ekland, to have a fling than for anybody else. The media would never leave me alone.’ She’s a firm believer in the Myth of Britt, is this actress who’s done an exercise video and has a chat show on Swedish television. She promotes herself, endearingly I think, in Californian style.

She split up from Peter Sellers, whom she married ‘about 10 days after meeting him’, when she was 25. ‘It was a manic marriage. I was madly in love with him but never knew whether he was going to kiss me or give me the cold shoulder. He abused me mentally, which is as bad as physical abuse. I tried to commit suicide with his Mogadon. I didn’t really want to kill myself.’ She had a ‘transatlantic relationship’ (and a baby) with Lou Adler. Rod Stewart, she says, broke her heart. ‘I trusted and loved him and he had affairs.’ And Warren Beatty? Is he the great lover he’s made out to be? ‘No’ – surprised – ‘I’ve had better.’

In Sweet Life the heroine has a lesbian affair. ‘I’ve never had one ever. Never really wanted to.’ What draws men to her? ‘God, I think after dark probably I draw them more,’ she laughs, dirtily.

‘It’s because I’m an enigma. One of the problems with you young women is that however gorgeous your body is, you’re still very insecure about what to do and how to do it, the etiquette of lovemaking and the whole package of before and after.’

As a woman becomes older, Britt says, she’s prepared for all eventualities. ‘You’re nice-smelling, clean, have soothing candles and you’re more inventive.”

Britt has three children: six-year-old Thomas Jefferson by Jim, Nicholai, 20, by Lou and Victoria Sellers, 28. She had TJ when she was 45, says she’s an ‘incredible’ older mother and is ‘fine and not at all guilty’ about the fact that none of her children had two parents who stuck together. In 1986 her daughter Victoria was involved in a drugs-related felony and recently she emerged as a high-class prostitute with the notorious Hollywood madame Heidi Fleiss. ‘I won’t talk about that.’

‘But what are your feelings, as a mother, about your daughter’s drug addiction and prostitution?’ I ask.

‘She tells me it’s all lies and that she is suing the paper.’ ‘And do you believe her?’

‘As a mother, yes, that is what I choose to believe,’ she says, frostily.

‘If the allegations were true, how would you feel and behave?” ‘I’m a mother. Whatever she’s done, she has my 100 per cent support and I love her as much as I ever did. I mean it.’ Britt believes in God and ‘talks to Him every night’, asking Him to look after her children and get her acting parts.

Her own mother contracted cancer aged 49, recovered and then got Alzheimer’s. She’s been in an institution for 10 years. ‘She’s like a vegetable. I said recently I’d kill her if the law allowed it. That made huge headlines – ‘Britt Ekland Would Like To Kill Her Mother’ – in the streets of Sweden. It was devastating… It’s too hard for me to see her alone, so I go with my three brothers.’ This is the only time Britt shows a chink in her emotional armour.

But I liked her. Outwardly she’s great fun, ‘a very social animal’, and has made herself unafraid. ‘A lot of women are frightened of losing their looks, jobs, husband, children or reputation. I wouldn’t be fazed by any of these.’ She protects herself with bullishness. She’s honest and open, but doesn’t trust people or let anybody close. ‘I don’t let people in. Not even Jim my ex got in there. I’m very guarded.’

She’s built a bastion around herself so that she can be completely in control and unhurt by people. ‘Inside me there’s like a door which is shut. Whatever is in there has to stay where it is. If I open that door, I’ll bring back feelings I haven’t had for a long time.’