great article by jane birkin

What I know about men
Jane Birkin actress and singer, 62, three daughters
Eva Wiseman
Sunday February 8 2009
The Observer


My father was my hero, which was easy because he was a hero anyway. He worked for the French resistance and was a James Bond sort during the war. He worked with spies in complete secrecy, on beaches in the dead of night, in the dead of winter. He had TB and a patch on his eye, which made him seem unbelievably romantic. He used to take cocaine for his frontal sinus. Once, aged about 16, he went off on a fire escape with a nurse after a sinus operation, and when he came back he had a frightful temperature, but to avoid getting the nurse into trouble he allowed the surgeon to presume they'd left something in his head and cut him open again. And by accident they sliced all his optic nerves, which left him with double vision for the rest of his life. I would often read to him - PG Wodehouse. When he was ill, coughing blood, it made my love for him even stronger. No other men could live up to my pa, but Serge [Gainsbourg] managed to make him laugh. They used to take their sleeping pills at the same time. They were like two owls on Mandrax. In one silly Italian film I did, Serge played a rather unconvincing detective and my father played Villagers One, Two and Three. He was just divine. People envied me him.

As a child in London I always tried to pass for a boy, and I succeeded quite successfully, even as a 16-year-old. I even made it into my brother's prep school, by cutting off my hair with kitchen scissors. I knew when I turned into a girl I'd lose my brother Andrew's affection, so I made sure I ran as fast as him, and I was as good at Chinese burns as him, but I was always just his lieutenant. He used to look like Hamlet in a sports car.

Growing up I had posters of Yul Brynner and Cliff Richard on my wall, including one where Cliff wore a pair of little bathing trunks. I wasn't very daring. I remember first being excited by boys when I shared an apple with a lifeguard on a black- sand beach, but I first fell in love with my brother's best friend Sam. I was also crazy about a fellow who lived opposite my parents. I could only see his house in winter, when the trees were no longer blooming, and I'd do ballet poses with a parrot on my shoulder in the window to attract his attention. My mother twigged eventually and called me a tart. He followed me down to the embankment one day - he was about 40, and I was around 15 - and after that I'd go and visit him, and snog in the hallway.

I've sung in prisons where there are no men, only women, which does feel strange. I've sung to male prisoners, too, killers sometimes, who have wept like babies. I think I am loved as much by women as men, maybe because I have no bosoms, maybe I'm an ambiguous comfort. I have been loved by the three most attractive men in the world. John Barry was as close to Gustav Mahler as one can get. I couldn't believe, at 17, that he had chosen me. When I lost him I was devastated, but I was a disaster in bed. I must have been the last virgin in Chelsea. My men have been kindly. After John I fell in love with the divine Serge, who bought me a diamond the day before he died. He loved the things about me that nobody noticed. He said he used to draw girls like me, half girl, half boy. He was 20 years older, and taught me everything. And then there was Jacques [Doillon], a dashing Red Indian, who turned up and said he wanted me. To have him in my life, and also Serge, who wanted to be my daughter's second papa, who wrote me another 45 songs after our affair had ended, was wonderful. I realise I am an extremely lucky woman.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited 2009