My earliest food memory, in London during the war, is of the shortage of canned peaches. When mum occasionally got hold of a can, we'd be allocated one slice each and I'd fight with my sister [Joan] over a second – "You had two already", "No, I had one", "You cannot have two just because you're older than me!" I say this because, nowadays, in my house in California, I'll sometimes have a full can of Del Monte peaches for lunch, with a whole bunch of cream.
My father was a theatrical agent and on Friday nights held a card party at home with Lew Grade and other guys, so mum would make a trolley of drinks and nibbles for them. When I was little I would sit silently on the bottom shelf of the trolley, before it was wheeled in, and then, hidden by the trolley-cloth, I'd listen to these chauvinist guys being derogatory about women. It really coloured my impressions of men.
I remember our kitchen on Great Portland Street, which was very dark. It's where the cat had kittens in the pantry and then proceeded to eat them. I sat there in horror.
My mother was an English cook – roast potatoes and roast chicken and roast lamb and potatoes, peas, gravy and red sauce. Nothing fancy, but terrific Sunday lunches. I remember once, during a row at Sunday lunch, my father threw his plate across the dining room. I can remember thinking "What a waste", as he always got the best cuts of meat.
I played truant frequently, forging letters from my mother. I was the ignored middle child who could get away with anything. So I spent years watching movies in Leicester Square, eating chocolate rolls from the Lyons' Corner House and burgers from Wimpy. Then at 14 or 15, I started sneaking out of the window most nights to go to Soho jazz clubs. Nobody knew because I looked 19. My drink was Pimm's with all this fruit in.
The first time I came to LA – after I got thrown out of school – I was just 16 and I lived with Joan for a while. I just remember how delicious I found American food. To go from a Wimpy burger in London to my first American drive-thru was astonishing.
The characters in my Santangelo books were inspired when I was a teenager in California and was introduced to gangsters by a girlfriend's boyfriend. A man became my godfather – platonic, but we ate linguine together a lot. He made the best pasta sauce and helped me out when I vandalised a boyfriend's car.
I'd not cooked before my first marriage and a year later had my first child and I suddenly got into the idea that I had to organise food – breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner. I became a best-selling author around the time of my second and third child. So I had four hours' sleep most nights for years. I'd be writing in the car while going to pick the kids up from school and then we'd have a tea of scones and cream and jam or my incredible tuna sandwiches with the crusts cut off.
Whenever I meet someone for lunch at Mr Chow's I get there 15 minutes early and sit there observing people, making notes on my iPhone. Spago – of course – is fantastic. Spago's Wolfgang Puck created the cocktail "The Jackie Collins" for me. A drink I'm loving is the Asian pear martini at RockSugar Pan Asian Kitchen. Another drink I really love, which you will think terribly childish, is Belvedere vodka and 7-Up with tonnes of ice.
I have a lot of gay friends and they love taking me for drinks at The Abbey, a gay hangout where all the barmen are handsome but straight, which is really interesting.
I was last in England to get an OBE from the Queen and to do a Graham Norton Show. The two events were three weeks apart so I stayed at the Dorchester hotel but shopped at Tesco and M&S, and stuffed my fridge with ham and smoked salmon sandwiches.
The Lucky Santangelo Cookbook is out now (Simon & Schuster, £16.99)
On 12 April, the standfirst has been amended to: 'She also has a cocktail named after her'.
