Mum’s the word for Tara’s lover

If "doing a Joan Collins" comes to mean taking up with a much younger partner, then Joan's eldest daughter Tara Newley (pictured) will be partly to blame. There is, famously, a 32-year age gap between the 74-year-old actress, who was partying hard at friend Dame Shirley Bassey's 70th birthday last night, and her fifth husband Percy Gibson. Now 44-year-old Tara, Joan's daughter from her marriage to singer Anthony Newley, has spoken of her own love for a younger man - 29-year-old roofer, Paul Beck.
 
"Paul's a flat roofer, to be precise," she said. "I have done a Joan Collins... But if you fall in love, you fall in love. The difference in our ages isn't important. My mother and Percy [Joan's fifth husband] are wonderful examples of how much age doesn't matter."
 
Newley met Beck five years ago when she was living with her previous partner, Richard Skeates, a property dealer. She was previously married to French composer Michael Adam, and has two children, nine-year-old Miel, and four-year-old Weston. Weston is named after Weston-super-Mare, the Somerset town where she lives - and where she met her new lover, who works for a local builder. "Paul is great with the kids and it's refreshing he's not from a showbiz background," she says.
 
Newley has co-written a sitcom as a vehicle for her mother's comedic talent. In So!, Collins plays the unhinged wife of the owner of a magazine empire. "She is a terrific comedienne and I'm determined Mum will be back on all our screens again," says her daughter. ·