The real Jackie Collins SEX, SHOULDER PADS AND SCHOOL RUNS

A new doco reveals her personal life was as gripping as her raunchy novels

With her enormous shoulder pads, huge hair and closet full of leopard-print outfits, Jackie Collins cut a figure every bit as glamorous as the characters in her bestselling romance novels. And behind the scenes, her life was just as dramatic.

“She had experienced so much pain that she wanted to preserve the happiness that she had found,” shares the late author’s youngest daughter Rory Green. “‘You’ve got to keep on keeping on,’ she told us, opting never to have therapy. So, we knew the outline of the past, but we never knew the details until she died.”

It’s been almost six years since Jackie – the younger sister of Hollywood icon Joan Collins – succumbed to breast cancer, aged 77.

Even as they whispered their final goodbyes, her three daughters Tracy, 60, Tiffany, 54, and Rory, 52, didn’t know exactly what was lurking in their beloved mother’s personal archives.

“We guessed she was keeping a lot of something,” says Rory. “She lived in a very large house by herself and was obsessed with built-in storage. So we knew there was plenty hiding in those cupboards.”

Inside them they found a treasure trove of memorabilia– from teen diaries filled with woes about feeling like an ugly duckling compared to her glamorous older sister to video footage of James Bond star Roger Moore hamming it up at family barbecues.

She’d kept every newspaper and magazine cutting that ever appeared about her and every review, good or bad – all beautifully arranged in scrapbooks.