It is not the first time in her life that Taylor has drawn flak from America's Moral Majority. When she and Richard Burton became a couple, while they were both still married, there were more death threats and even attempts, she tells me, to run them off the road. "Oh yeah," she says, "we had been evil and broken commandments. All the religious zealots came out and wanted to hang us. The Pope - who is not a religious zealot but, er," she giggles and adopts a hokey accent, "He mighty big up there. He one of the big boys. He wrote a letter in the Vatican newspaper saying that my children should be taken away from me. Those were not easy times. I was sickened, maddened, saddened and heartbroken that those kinds of thoughts would be in people's minds to such a degree of vehemence. Isn't the Pope supposed to be like a descendant of Jesus? And didn't Jesus forgive Mary Magdalene? Where is the love in that?"

I ask her whether she had a favourite husband, and her response is so theatrical I am tempted to see if the cameras are rolling. "I have had two great loves in my life. I have been doubly blessed. And I consider myself soohh lucky. Some people never find that kind of love that I'm talking of... I had it twice," this delivered in a stage whisper. I do hope one of them was Richard Burton. "Of course... and Michael Wilding. I loved him with my life. We had 13 months together and our daughter, Eliza, was six months old when he was killed in a plane crash over the mountains of Albuquerque." Taylor was left a widow at 26, a mother of three, with a film to finish - Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

And did she consider that any of her husbands were a complete waste of time? She yodels with laughter "Yesss. But I'm not going to tell you. I'll let you guess. I'm a gentleman." Listening to this exchange afterwards, we sound - and not for the first time - like a couple of tipsy molls painting the town red. And yet Taylor, after years on the razzle, is now teetotal (she still indulges her taste for beer, but these days it's non-alcoholic) and I am on the mineral water. For the most part, I get the impression that she enjoys being a bit risque and bawdy and that is why, unlike many reformed drunks, she is a lot of fun to be with.

The more cheeky the question, the better she seems to like it. She is homely rather than high-handed, without a trace of grande-damery. At one point, she offers to refill my glass of water herself, unlike most of the bigwigs I have encountered who simply yell or ring a bell for a servant. Standing up, she loses her balance, and apologises for her clumsiness, saying that since the brain surgery she has been left unsteady on her feet. Several weeks after our meeting, Taylor has another of her falls and is obliged to recuperate at the Cedars-Sinai hospital, a place with which she is so familiar that Burton once referred to it as her second home.

High on the list of dud husbands, I suspect, was the last one, Larry Fortensky (that hair!), the construction worker she met in rehab. Later when we talk about how she would still like to live with a man - "I like to cuddle and the companionship and all that, but not that blasted piece of paper" - I ask her why, in that case, she had not forgone marriage sooner. "Well, first of all, John (Warner) was running for Senate, so that explains that one. Fortensky? God only knows. His mother was dying of cancer, and she wanted us to get married so badly... and I got carried away in a moment of sentimentality."

She suddenly breaks off and shrieks: "Shhhugggarr! You just come here to your mother!" The miniature dog, which resembles a bedraggled Slinky, comes into the room and Taylor leans down to cuddle her, making a series of mewing, infantile bleats including, stomach-turningly, "Has Sugar done a poo-poo?" You really love your dog, I say redundantly. "Oh I worship my dog," she replies, "she's an extension of me." Looking at their fluffy white hair, together, I am struck by the fanciful notion that perhaps Taylor's new hairdo has been modelled on her dog's. Sugar is not simply a canine accessory but part of a double act - she is featured with her owner in the perfume ads, for instance, and is in Taylor's arms at press conferences. It's only later that I realise how rude my question sounds, but fortunately Taylor does not take it that way.

The only time she does get cranky with me is when I ask her about being beaten. I reviewed a couple of trashy biographies of Taylor some years ago, which left me with the impression that she had been physically abused by several husbands. When I raise the matter, she says, stony-faced, "Not plural. That's all I'm going to say. I have never been beaten or abused by more than one man, and if someone out there wants to say, 'Oh God, it must have been blah, blah, blah,' I will say, 'No it was not blah, blah, blah. It was Nick Hilton, who drank himself to death by the age of 33. And alcohol was a great part of this behaviour." So you wouldn't consider lending your support to a refuge or anything to help other battered women? "No. Because it makes me sound like a battered woman," she replies. "I had a very unfortunate marriage and part of it was being beaten up. I'm not going to make that one of my crusades." (It emerged in a recent American interview that Hilton had once kicked her in the stomach, causing her to have a miscarriage.

Her reluctance to discuss this period of her life may well be that it summons memories that Taylor would rather were not revived, but I think something else was going on as well. The uplifting message of our interview - and one which the star seemed keen, in an unforced way, to promote - is that despite all her adversities, the illnesses, the addictions, the tragedies and deaths, Taylor has not only survived, but in her late sixties, she is on top form. "With age, if you set your mind on the positive," she says, "you can have more fun. You can be more in control and you can make things happen." So let's not spoil it all by focusing on a time when she was a victim of something out of her control.

And while we are on the subject of rejuvenescence, Taylor's libido, she informs me, is as lively as ever. I ask her whether it's important to her to have a good sex life and she exclaims: "Yesss. God! Yes! I have some girlfriends who are my age and they say, 'Oh Elizabeth, (breathy dowager voice) sex isn't important at our age.' And I say, 'Bull-shee-ut.' Well, each to his own, but I have as much desire as I did in my twenties and thirties."

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