For many decades, Jess Conrad has been known as an actor, a singer, and the vainest man in showbiz. The English entertainer had three hit records in the early 1960s and has starred on stage and screen since 1955.
He is the subject of an upcoming profile on Talking Pictures TV and will star in BBC soap Doctors. But the way he talks, you would think he was Elvis Presley and Brad Pitt rolled into one.
“I’m appreciated. I’m loved. I’m the last of the real stars, I think,” boasts the 86-year-old, who even often refers to himself in the third person.
“I think showbiz society like Jess Conrad because when Jess Conrad arrives everyone knows he’s in the room.
“Heads turn. Perhaps I’m more handsome than anybody else. I want to be the most important person in the room.”
His vanity is meant to be a running joke but it is so relentless you do wonder.
The secret of Jess’s 60-year marriage to Renee, a Dutch model he met when sharing a flat with Terence Stamp and Michael Caine, he says is “because we’re both in love with the same man!”
And he claims Princess Diana and her rival Camilla among his admirers.
Of the countless photos of him with celebrities on his social media is one he captions “Princess Diana meeting Jess”, taken after a Royal Variety Performance.
“I asked her, ‘Do you ever get out alone?’, not knowing that she did. She blushed beetroot red,” he says.
“Of course I was the type of bloke she’d have liked to go out with – tall, dark and handsome. So it was almost like a teenage fan talking to me.”
Jess, who has also met the Queen, was introduced to the Duchess Of Cornwall at her recent 75th birthday party.
“When Diana was around, I thought Camilla was the devil,” he admits.
“I was expecting to find somebody who was probably a stick-in-the-mud and not what you’d call beautiful.
“What I found was a beautiful woman with a wonderful warm personality.”
A rare moment of modesty came when Jess was presented with an OBE in 2011 by Princess Anne.
He revealed: “She said, ‘I hope you’re not disappointed I’m not the Queen’ and I said, ‘No, Ma’am, as long as you’re not disappointed I’m not George Clooney’.”
Despite his grand old age, Jess has just moved with Renee from the three-bedroom house with a swimming pool in Buckinghamshire where they had lived since 1962 to a bigger property in Kent with a farm, a lake and 13 acres of land.
Why upsize at a time in life when most people downsize?
“On Jubilee weekend in June, I went with Jimmy Tarbuck to a garden party at Brinsworth House, the retirement home for entertainers,” he explains.
“We saw Richard O’Sullivan and Mike Yarwood. It’s all very sad. As good as it is, the last thing in the world I’d like is to finish up there.”
Predictably, first to put on the walls of the new home were mirrors.
“I don’t do drugs. I don’t drink more than I need to do. I’m addicted to nothing except looking in the mirror,” Jess says.
Real name Gerald Arthur James, he started life in Brixton, South London, but spent most of his youth in the West End.
His father Joel was a jazz pianist and mother Linda a beauty queen. Jess’s brother Richard died from a drugs overdose in his late 20s.
Starting out as a movie extra and model, Jess got cast in a TV play as a pop star, then became one for real when he got spotted by Jack Good. He put him on Oh Boy!, Britain’s first teenage TV music show.
Jess says: “As I’d been the best-looking boy in my school, when I became a pop star and girls started screaming it didn’t faze me. I found girls under my [hotel] bed and in the wardrobe.”
He made an uncredited appearance in 1959 film Serious Charge, featuring Cliff Richard’s big screen debut.
A year later Jess pipped Cliff and Adam Faith to be voted England’s Most Popular Singer of 1960.
“My fan club was equal to Cliff’s. Sadly it was short-lived because the Beatles came along and knocked us sideways.”
Fortunately, Jess had more success as a hunky actor. Or so he says.
“All the leading ladies in London wanted me to star with them. They’d audition me and ask me to take my clothes off. I was on the front of Photoplay [magazine]. You had to be a really big Hollywood star to get that” adds Jess, though he never fitted that description.
“I went to Hollywood. They begged me to stay because I was Jess Conrad.
“Then I thought ‘How can I stay here? I’ve got a wonderful house in Denham, and pantomime booked!” Jess says Terence Stamp only landed his role as Sergeant Troy in 1967 film Far From The Madding Crowd because he was singing.
Apparently coloured contact lenses cost him the chance to succeed Sean Connery as 007 as he trouble seeing.
With Renee, Jess has daughters Natalie and Sasha. From two earlier relationships, he has a third daughter and a son he only got to know quite recently but he says he can’t remember their names.
Jess misses many of his old neighbours from Denham who died, including Roger Moore, John Mills, and Cilla Black.
He says: “I had lots of showbiz parties there and they’re talked about forever. I’m planning celebrity lunches here with new neighbours such as James Whale.
“Talking Pictures are doing a big thing on my life and showing most of my films. So my life hasn’t changed.”
But it almost did after a charity golf day at Brocket Hall, Herts, when the UK hit a record 40.3C on July 19.
He says: “Halfway through I collapsed, I suppose with sunstroke. I didn’t go to hospital but perhaps I should have done.”
Shortly before the drama, Jess filmed an episode of Doctors to be shown on October 25.
He says: “He’s an anorak. You’d almost only offer that part to an actor like Laurence Olivier. I’m going to be brilliant in this show. It’s like I’ve been reborn.”
In real life, Jess looks a lot younger than his years. Has he had work done?
He says: “No, nothing at all. What happens is you get older but you’re still the best-looking fellah in your age group.”
But Jess, who was in ITV series Last Laugh in Vegas in 2018 with a host of old stars, says he wants to be remembered.
He confides: “I should’ve been a film star. Instead I’m a big personality.
“Everything I say is laced with a sense of humour, not taking oneself seriously.”
