Diamonds and pearls

It was the mid-Sixties and the famous couple were filming Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Smith was staying in Los Angeles with her friend, actress Jill Melford, then married to actor John Standing (Sir John Leon). "I remember I was rather fed up because I was sleeping under the cocktail bar in this ridiculous apartment they rented on Sunset Boulevard," says Smith. At the time, Melford and Smith were partners in a London-based interior design business. Smith recalls, "For some reason, long forgotten, I was feeling dreadfully depressed and Jill said, ‘I’m appearing in a play with someone who’ll cheer you up.’ It was Brook and, of course, he made me laugh a lot. He was the funniest man I’d ever met."

Soon the two were an item and Smith was invited to dine with his friends - who just happened to be the most glamorous pair of movie stars on the planet. "You can imagine, I was in awe. I was about to meet the most beautiful woman in the world - and I have to say she is luminous. Her features are utterly flawless and her eyes really are an unbelievable shade of violet. No wonder Richard was forever buying her jewellery that would complement them. When she’s angry they flash. She doesn’t suffer fools gladly, although she can charm anybody." The two women struck up an instant friendship. "We just clicked, I don’t know why. It was one of those things. You sometimes meet people that you like at once, and that’s how it was with Elizabeth. Although I was younger than her, we had a rapport and, happily, we still have it."

These days Liz Smith, one of the best known figures in the Scottish arts world, has just been appointed press manager for Scottish Ballet. She’s also ‘den mother’ to the Edinburgh Fringe in her capacity as resident publicist at Assembly Theatre. In other words, it’s always been part of her job to talk to the press, but she has remained resolutely discreet about her enduring friendship with Taylor. She’s agreed to talk to mark the publication of the actress’s new book, My Love Affair With Jewelry. In this sumptuous book, the 70-year-old actress opens up her vaults - and her memory banks - to reveal all about one of the great loves of her life, her astonishing collection of gems.

The other great loves were, of course, Taylor’s third husband, the late Mike Todd, and Richard Burton. Smith never knew Todd, but was captivated by Burton. "I adored Richard," she says. Even though he died in 1984, Smith’s eyes fill with tears when she speaks about him. She remembers being a Burton groupie as a teenager at London’s Weber Douglas drama school in the Fifties, when she and her friends would buy tickets to sit in the gods and watch his every performance. "Isn’t life odd? I never expected in a million years to meet him or that this golden couple would become such dear friends."

Smith and Burton would often sit up talking into the wee small hours, long after their partners were tucked up in their beds. "We discussed everything under the sun - life, love, literature. Richard was immensely well-read, very literate. He could talk for hours on any subject. I was very, very fond of him. He had so much respect for Elizabeth as an actress. He told me she taught him everything he knew about film acting. They really were soulmates, although they were so passionate they couldn’t live apart and they couldn’t live together."

While showering Taylor with jewels worth a king’s ransom, he also gave generously to friends such as Smith. One special gift was a "ping-pong" diamond ring that she won by beating him at a fiercely fought game of table tennis at the Burton’s Gstaad home. A ping-pong was Burton’s nickname for the smallest diamond he could find - just one-eighth of a carat. These rings became an in-joke with the superstar couple because Burton had recently bought Taylor the Cartier diamond which, at 69.42 carats, resembles a pigeon’s egg in diameter. And Taylor already owned the 33.19 carat Krupp diamond, which is the size of a large walnut. (Once, Princess Margaret snootily remarked that the ring was "very vulgar". According to Smith, Taylor offered to let the princess try on the ring. "It doesn’t look so vulgar now, does it, ma’am?" she asked with typical Taylor chutzpah.)

When Taylor wore the Cartier for the first time at Princess Grace’s 40th birthday party, she waited for someone’s mouth to drop open and for the inevitable comment, "Oh my God, what a magnificent diamond!" To which Taylor would raise her right hand, wiggle her little finger - adorned with the ping-pong diamond which she, too, won in competition - and reply, "Isn’t it beautiful! The setting is lovely and the diamond’s absolutely perfect." Then the couple would fall about giggling.

Taylor still has her ping-pongs, but Smith lost hers when her parents’ Perthshire home was gutted by fire a decade ago. The ring was one of many priceless mementoes and treasured snapshots of happy times with the King and Queen of Hollywood destroyed in the Rannoch blaze. "Needless to say, Elizabeth was an absolute rock," says Smith. "I love the fact that in the book she writes, ‘I hope that all my family and dear friends who have been part of my life know that I cherish their love more than anything. You can’t cry on a diamond’s shoulder, and diamonds won’t keep you warm at night. But they’re sure fun when the sun shines.’"

Certainly, Smith’s abiding memories are of sharing fun-filled times, from Taylor’s lavish 40th birthday party in Budapest (Princess Grace did a knees-up with Frankie Howerd) to family barbecues with jacket potatoes and caviar around the pool in Los Angeles. Smith and Williams were even on hand while Burton bid by telephone for the Cartier diamond being auctioned in New York in 1969. "We were having drinks in their favourite pub, The Bear at Woodstock, near our cottage in Oxfordshire. I remember Richard going up to a 1m, then he was outbid by 50,000. He immediately got on the phone and offered the new owners another 50,000. It was so exciting, the stuff of fantasy. Elizabeth was beside herself and several bottles of fizz were cracked open." Instantly, it became known as the Burton-Taylor diamond and because it was much too big for a ring - even for Elizabeth - she eventually had Cartier design a necklace. "She sold it some years ago and I think rather regrets it, although she insists she’s simply the custodian of all this wealth and beauty."

Never one for putting on the glitz herself, Smith has never been envious of her friend’s fabulous collection. "Elizabeth lets her girlfriends try on her jewels. On me they look like glass. She’s incredibly generous and has given me lots of presents that I really love." For instance, Smith never removes a gold Cartier friendship bracelet from Taylor, and when we meet she’s wearing a pink and gold Chopard watch, which has loose diamonds rattling behind the glass. ‘Be Happy’ says an inscription on the face. Smith explains, "Elizabeth is extremely thoughtful. She gave me this watch a few years ago when my life was sad. But I have found it’s wise never to comment on anything she owns because she immediately gets one for you. For instance, Brook and I honeymooned at their house at Puerta Vallarta in Mexico and I admired her caftan, and she gave me one exactly the same. I remember her wearing the fantastic Schlumberger brooch, fashioned into an iguana, after Richard made the film The Night of the Iguana in Mexico, but I didn’t dare remark on it. A couple of years ago when I spent Hogmanay with her in California I said I liked her bathrobe - the following day there was one exquisitely gift-wrapped on my bed."

And Taylor’s happy to lend her toys to friends. One night Smith was in the south of France preparing for a gala evening at Princess Grace’s Monaco palace. "Oh God, what am I going to wear?" she groaned. Immediately Taylor lassoed her with ropes of pearls of every size, shape and hue, from milky white to stygian black. Actress Suzy Kendall, then married to Dudley Moore, was also bedecked with so many diamonds that she looked like a beautiful, blonde Christmas tree. "It was the most magical evening of my life," says Smith. "I felt I looked a million dollars - for the first and last time. I can’t remember what my dress was like, pretty ordinary I guess because we were hardly rolling in money. At the party this dowager duchess looked at me and whispered loudly, ‘It’s disgusting! No young girl should be wearing that much jewellery.’ She was clearly very jealous because she could see they were the real thing. It was before Richard bought the famous La Peregrina pearl for Elizabeth. That’s the gem that one of her pet dogs almost ate when she lost it in a hotel room. I’m sure she would have loaned me that too."

While they were in Monte Carlo, Taylor asked if Smith wanted to "come see some of my goodies?" They went to the bank vaults and opened drawer after drawer, revealing an Aladdin’s cave of jewels sitting alongside some charm bracelets her children had made, and which Taylor values as much as her Cartiers and Krupps.

For despite the glitz and glamour, Smith says it’s still the informal family occasions that she and Elizabeth cherish the most. She recalls staying with Burton and Taylor on their yacht when the news came that Elizabeth was a grandmother at 38. Her son Michael (by Michael Wilding) had become a father at the age of 18. Burton, Taylor and Smith set off to Van Cleef & Arpels in Antibes, because he wanted to buy a "granny present". What he found was a pair of long, drippy, swingy diamond earrings set in gold and a choker with a snarling lion sculpted out of diamonds and gold at its centre. "Nobody is ever going to believe you are a grandmother," Burton declared.

These days Taylor, who writes of her abiding love for her four children - "without whom there would have been no life" - not only has grandchildren, but a great-grandson. For both Elizabeths, life has held its share of tragedy and triumph, but the friendship remains constant. "I have been truly blessed to know Elizabeth," Smith says, fingering a sapphire-studded heart necklace, a recent gift from Taylor. "I have shared so much laughter and so many tears with her. It’s been an enormous privilege to see such a great beauty positively dripping in emeralds or rubies or diamonds. Anyone who appreciates beautiful people and beautiful things will understand that there is no sight in the world more glorious than Elizabeth when she sets out to razzle dazzle."

♦ My Love Affair With Jewelry by Elizabeth Taylor (Thames & Hudson, 35)