Shirley Conran: Superwoman author confesses 'If I could turn back time I wouldn't have had children' | Daily Mail Online
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Well, of course you are going to get on to the subject of sex when you are interviewing Shirley Conran. The woman practically invented sex as far as my generation was concerned.
Without her and Lace, the raunchy novel that was passed from schoolbag to schoolbag throughout the Eighties, we’d probably have got that sort of education from biology books or — shudder! — our parents.
So was sex as important — and, um, colourful —  in her real life as it was in her fiction? Astonishingly, it isn’t the personal nature of the question that offends her, but the tense.
Dynasty: Shirley Conran with sons Sebastian, left, and Jasper in 1990 - she says she wished she'd never had children
‘Was? What makes you think it still isn’t?’ she says, eyes flashing. ‘I may be 80 this year but believe me, that part of me isn’t dead yet.’
Oh Lordy. Within minutes we’ve established more than anyone needs to know about Shirley Conran’s sex life. Yes, she still has an active one and, yes, sex is one of those things that, like a good single malt, improves with age. ‘It’s less complicated as you get older because you know what you like,’ she volunteers, cheerily.
We talk (well, she talks; I try not to blush) about everything from toy boys to the odd things that make her feel ‘perky’ (a line of chorus girls in fishnets, since you ask), and why sex with real-life psychotic billionaires isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
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‘It isn’t all Fifty Shades Of Grey,’ she says. ‘They are generally quite ferocious people, not humble ones, who want to beat you quietly on the bottom.’
Too much information? Quite possibly. So imagine how the poor electrician who came to shift her TV the other day must have felt. He had the audacity to ask exactly why this sweet little almost-octogenarian wanted her television set moved away from the end of the bed. ‘I kept telling him that I just wanted it across the room, and he wouldn’t let it go, so eventually I told him: “Because if it stays there it might get kicked!” He looked at me and eventually went: “Oh!”’ Oh indeed.
Still, where would we all be if Shirley Conran had been a shrinking violet, too timid to shock? It’s easy to forget quite what a trail she blazed in the Eighties; part of the feminist movement determined to prove that women could be just as crude and clever, funny and fiery, as the men. 
Blockbusters: Shirley Conran's book Lace was a huge hit in the 1980s - and got people talking about sex, whilst Superwoman gave the chance for women to excel
She was a journalist — as Women’s Editor at the Daily Mail she worked on the launch of the Femail pages —before she turned herself into the queen of the bonkbusters. Lace — whose opening chapter ended with the quite brilliant line: ‘Which one of you bitches is my mother?’ — actually started life as a how-to manual for girls who were, she felt, woefully ignorant about sex.
She spent 18 months writing it, much of that on ‘research’, which seems to have involved getting her well-connected girlfriends to spill the beans on their own bedtime secrets.
Her own life — moneyed background, ultimately disastrous marriage to up-and-coming designer Terence Conran, and high-profile friendships with people like Mary Quant — was woven in there, as was her experience as a fashion writer and model.
‘I remember getting irritated by reading James Bond, thinking: “Who needs this much detail about guns?” I wanted to know what the girl was wearing when she was raped,’ she explains. ‘And the idea of a woman trying to find out who her mother was.
Well, there had been plenty of books about people wondering about their father. I thought: “Could this be done about a mother?” And it could.’
Is Lace as relevant today as it was then, as she claims? That theory is about to be tested as, 30 years on, it is being re-released for a whole new generation. The original version sold three million copies in 35 countries.
Groundbreaking: Shirley Conran, pictured here in Monaco during her writing days, was an advocator of being honest about sex
Will the new one hold its own against the publishing juggernaut that is Fifty Shades Of Grey, though? She rolls her eyes. Shirley is absolutely not a Fifty Shades kind of girl, finding the  writing clunky, embarrassing and in need of a good edit.
She scoffs at the book’s ‘infantile’ style, says she considers it ‘baby porn’ — ‘I mean, there is no sex at all until page 200’ — and has already off-loaded her copy to a charity shop.
She does agree, however, that Fifty Shades has demonstrated ‘something hugely important’ about women and their attitude to sex.
‘The problem is that I don’t think the publishing industry understands it. Their reaction is to churn out more dirty books. It isn’t that simple.
‘Lace wasn’t actually about the sex. It was about the feelings women have about sex. That’s an altogether more complicated thing.’
Her 1975 book Superwoman— famous for the line ‘life is too short to stuff a mushroom’ — may not have made her as rich as Lace did, but it was another epoch-defining work.
Part compedium of housekeeping tips, part plea for women to find themselves and stop allowing themselves to be defined as just mothers and wives, it led to her being feted and abhorred in equal measure.
‘I was attacked from all sides,’ she recalls. ‘I was criticised by the sisters for even talking about housework, and how to get it done most efficiently. They said I was setting impossible standards, when the book was about exactly the opposite. And I was criticised by housewives, who said that I was trying to take their identity from them.’
All these years on, you might expect to find Shirley Conran wrapped in leopard-skin in Palm Beach, but she actually lives in a Thirties mansion block in Putney.
In the flesh she is a surprisingly frail figure, given all the talk of sexual shenanigans. She lives alone, with a succession of housekeepers and PAs, but seems irritated that she needs help.
She has suffered from ME since the Eighties and on the day we meet is cross with herself because she ‘overdid it the other day by walking around the block’. Her mind is as active as it has ever been, though.
Pioneer: The first issue of Femail appeared in the Daily Mail on Tuesday, October 29,1968 and was edited by Shirley Conran
She says she, like her novel, was a product of her era. It puzzles me that someone who was as feisty as her on paper 30 years ago ended up with a life that sounds so down-trodden.
She has been married three times, and was terribly wounded when her first marriage collapsed. It wasn’t the infidelity that did it — Terence had an affair with his secretary while she was pregnant — but the blatant rubbing-her-nose-in-it.
‘It was so public. It was treachery. Everyone knew, but still he wouldn’t discuss it with me. To this day, we haven’t talked about our divorce because he just wouldn’t.
‘It wasn’t just the infidelity, though. It was the constant criticism. That “could-do-better” voice. It wears you down like a stone. He’d say “This egg is slightly overcooked”, and by the time breakfast was over the day was spoiled.’
She walked out ‘in the middle of the night, with my handbag’ and into a very different life. Money was so tight she once queued for welfare hand-outs. ‘It was January and I didn’t have a winter coat, so I borrowed a mink from my neighbour. I didn’t think that was peculiar at all.
They sent me packing, rightly so, when they discovered I had my own house.’ She was the first person she knew to divorce. ‘Then I was the first person I knew to divorce twice, then three times.’
It took a long time for her to work out that she didn’t need a husband. In 1963 she married John Stephenson, a former Conran sales director, but they split after three years. She then married engineer and businessman Kevin O’Sullivan, who she describes as ‘a layabout’, in 1972. The union lasted just two years.
‘My aunt once said to my mother: “Why does she keep doing it?”, meaning getting married. I can’t answer that myself. You had to wash it out of your system, I guess.
‘My generation had all the remains of the Victorian upbringing. We felt we had to play the wife. We felt guilty if we didn’t lay the table properly; guilty if we didn’t Hoover the carpet 19 times a day.
‘I suppose we always wanted to do better, but we were doomed to failure. In our day a girl pretended to be a little living doll. When the husband found out that you had the occasional hangover, or didn’t look pretty while pregnant or were a bit too hippy — in either sense — his vision changed.
‘We didn’t have the choices women have today, at home or in the workplace. I think I was 40 before I realised you could say no to a man. We were very easily subjugated, even the supposedly militant ones.’
What about children? One of six children herself, it never occurred to her that she wouldn’t be a mother. She and Terence had two boys, Sebastian, now 56, and Jasper, 52, who have gone on to be famous designers in their own right. She takes credit for the fact that she taught them to sew. ‘I simply didn’t have time to sew buttons on shirts, so they did it themselves.’
Nice jeans: An advertisement showing off the work of fashion designer Jasper Conran - whom mother Shirley hasn't spoken to for 10 years
She is desperately proud of them both, and has dedicated the new edition of Lace to them.
There is a but, however. And a big one. It recently emerged that she hasn’t spoken to Jasper for ten years. He has effectively cut her out of her life — and she insists she has no idea why.
She only became aware that she was being ostracised when he told a newspaper that he used to be close to his mother, but no longer was. ‘I thought they had it wrong. I phoned the journalist to complain. I phoned Jasper’s office. But there had not been a mistake.’
For over ten years now, there has been no contact between mother and son. She normally talks with speed and eloquence, but she stumbles to find the words to describe this chapter.
‘It is very painful. If he chooses not to speak to me, that is his decision, but to not tell me why is . . . cruel.’
Has there been any contact, even a Christmas card?
‘Well I often write to him, but I tear the letters up. And I was admitted to hospital last year as an emergency and he did send word that he would like me to have a private room, rather than stay in the general ward.
‘It was generous of him, and I was a little cheered by it. He may not have wanted to see me, but at least he didn’t want me dead.’
Old flame: Shirley Conran divorced Sir Terence Conran, designer and restauranteur in 1996
For years, she would not acknowledge that she had to let her son go. ‘I fell into a great depression about it, but one day one of my friends said: “Shirley, how long are you going to mourn Jasper for?” You have to move on.
‘Now I try to think positively. I had him for 40 years, and maybe I should be grateful for that.’
How much has all this soured her view of motherhood, or did she always kick against the notion that a woman has to be defined by her children?
She says the great thing about my generation is that we have a choice about whether to have children — and, in her book, women should be applauded for saying no.
‘If I had the situation all over again, I think I would definitely decide not to have children. It puts you at a disadvantage as a person.
‘People will say: “Oh you cannot understand a mother’s love” — but at 20 who wants to? At 20, you want to go skiing. Let’s face it, having children is illogical for a young woman. If I said, “I’d like to introduce you to someone you will have to look after for the next 20 years. Every penny you make will have to go to them, and not to yourself”,  You would say “f*** off!”, or you would if you had any sense.’
Would her life have been easier without children? ‘Undoubtedly. Anybody’s life would be easier. My grandmother used to say: “Babies are a great time-waster.” They are adorable time-wasters, yes, but my point is that they are not a sensible career choice.’
Nor are husbands. ‘No they are not. I did notice that my career always sort of leaked down the sink when I was married, and shot up when I wasn’t. I worked out in the end that I had more fun not being married.’
Alas for her, perhaps, she is as susceptible to what she calls ‘emotional flim-flam’ as the rest of us. She agrees that while she is a highly practical person, wont to arrange her life in folders and files, all neatly marked with Post-It notes, she is something of a romantic at heart. ‘I am very much a velvet and feathers girl.’
There is a man in her life at the minute, she says — hence the need to shift that TV fast, presumably —but she won’t tell me anything about him. What sort of man does she go for?
‘I am attracted by quirky people, mavericks, by the sort of person who would have been a pirate. Piratical buccaneers, I guess.’
Not men who are good at ironing, then — which is what every real-life Superwoman really needs.
‘No, and isn’t that always the problem,’ she laughs. ‘We are rarely attracted to the things that are good for us.’
Lace by Shirley Conran (Canongate, £7.99) is out now. Shirley Conran and Lauren Laverne will be in conversation at The Soho Hotel in September.
Go to canongate.tv/laceevent for more information.