Jerry Hall is 70, single for one of the first times in her life, and is loving this incarnation. “It sounds selfish, but I really enjoy just doing what I want to do,” she tells me in her Scarlett O’Hara drawl. “You worry about getting old and being alone, then you get there and think, ‘Hey, this is really great!’ What a surprise.”

“I was a bit nervous about living alone at first,” she continues. “I thought, ‘Oh God, I’ve never done this ever’, but it’s so easy! The house stays so clean. You can watch anything you want on TV.” She loves hosting friends for lunches and dinners. “But now I only invite the people I love. It’s the most peaceful, stress-free time of my life.”

She bursts out laughing, before adding with considerable satisfaction: “And I can sleep diagonally across the bed.”

Hall is the OG supermodel, a six-foot (183-centimetre) platinum-blonde glamazon personified, whose extraordinary life reads like a Zelig-ish parade of greatest cultural hits.…