There was a Gallic coup for the Observer in 1976 when it persuaded novelist Françoise Sagan to interview Brigitte Bardot (‘At 41 still a sex kitten’, the introduction noted, approvingly).
The pair were ‘nodding acquaintances’ who had never had a conversation, but there was no easing in from Sagan, also 41, who kicked off with ‘Who are you? What have you done with your life?’ Bardot answered in the same spirit: ‘Someone who is incomplete,’ she said. Films ‘annihilate and imprison you. I’ve failed my real life.’
