The queen of flirts

Sally Greene prides herself on the fact that she can get anyone to do anything. She is the woman who tempted Kevin Spacey to take over as creative director of the Old Vic, the third theatre she has owned. She tempted Elton John to be its chair, tempted Peter Mandelson on to its board. At the moment, she may well be tempting Hillary Clinton to something or other, but she won't say. She is also a legendary party-giver, and apparently the parties and the power are not unconnected.

We meet in her office at the theatre, which still has Vivien Leigh's name on the door. She welcomes me with a bounce and a giggle. She is very pretty in a Marianne Faithfull way. When she laughs and cutely wrinkles her nose and shows off her teeth, which she does a lot, she becomes a little Doddyish.

Greene, 46, was born just off King's Road in London and, one way or another, has spent a lifetime in theatre. Her father was a lawyer and aspiring playwright, her grandfather was an actor.

Actually, she says, her grandfather was a permanent understudy. One day, the lead got sick and they didn't give her grandfather the part. He emigrated to Australia with his girlfriend in a huff, and his wife and two sons never saw them again. They only knew that he had died because there was a tiny notice in a Sydney newspaper saying so.

Her dad was not only a successful lawyer but he was a director of the Louis I Michaels company which runs theatres. But it never helped realise his dreams. "My father wrote dreadful plays. He always used to put in this part for a cockney girl because he used to say to me I had such a terrible accent, and he always put in a part for me."

Did she act in them? "Never. He never actually had one produced. Poor old Dad!" Greene soon got the acting bug herself. She tells me that she went to not one but two drama schools, the first of which was Guildhall. Ah, I say, trying to charm and flirt and bond just as she has done so successfully through life, my best friend went there. "Oh really," she says, "and then I went to a place called Studio 68, which is like a postgraduate school in Nottingham or something." Unfortunately, things never quite worked out. "I was the worst actress, ever," she stage-whispers.

So is all this - I throw my hands round the Old Vic - her revenge on the world of theatre? If she and her grandad couldn't get the parts, and dad couldn't get his plays performed in theatres, she would just buy the bloody things? "Hahahaha! Not at all! Not at ALL! " Greene's sentences come with capitals and italics and exclamation marks galore.

It would have been great, I say - you starring in your dad's plays at your own theatres. No, she says, that could never have been. "Poor old Dad! He died of a massive heart attack in his 60s about two weeks after we got Richmond theatre. So it was rather sad. Yesss! I would have definitely done something for him. We would have found somewhere, even some tiny little theatre, I don't know where exactly, Wales or something, and put one on, just so he knew."

It was actually Greene's father who suggested she bought a theatre to keep herself occupied. She had married Robert Bourne, who had made some money in property, and she was pregnant with her first child, Lily, now 15.

"My father said, why don't you go down to Richmond theatre? It's falling to pieces and needs someone to look after it, and I think it could be something for you because I don't think you're going to be the sort of person who wants to sit around bringing up kids and doing bugger all." She spent the next year and a half in a portable hut outside the theatre raising £1m. This was the first time she realised she had the knack of getting the rich and famous to empty their pockets.

"I remember the local paper had a cartoon of me skipping down the steps and I was wearing a polka dot bow in my hair saying 'Give me the money boys!' Heheheh!" Who commissioned it? " I think David Dimbleby did! " she squeals with delight. In 1992, she went on to restore the Criterion in the West End, and then she did the same at the Old Vic for £3.5m in 1998. By then, Bourne was reckoned to be worth around £250m.

The wall behind Greene is a mirror, which gives me the weird sensation of talking to myself. To our side is a dummy, dressed in a transparent gown. "It's not mine, it's Tommy Hilfiger - he did up this room," she says. She's a fabulous name-dropper.

How do you know so many people, I ask. Well, she says, she didn't 15 years ago, but the theatre is a very seductive business. In fact, back at convent school, which she attended from the age of four, she was the girl with the big braces, who was blamed by teachers for putting ink on the chalk and other such adorable cliches. But, yes, she says she has learned a great deal about handling people. "Is this going to be called Sally's friends?" She giggles edgily.

Well, I say, I would just love to know how she gets all these people to do things for her. "My dad was very good with people. He never, ever, ever looked away from somebody's eyes. He looked at them until they had to look away, and he kind of taught me that you have to really look somebody straight in the face." I'm trying my best. We are staring each other out. "You don't blink, do you?" she says. "I like people. I don't say I like everybody, but I try to ... I'm not even going to say that, it sounds so condescending, but I try to see something nice about people or interesting about people or fascinating."

What about if I pretend to be Kevin Spacey, and you seduce me, I suggest. She looks doubtful. Actually, she says, it was easy. Two years ago she took him out for lunch, and "Within about 10 minutes I said to Kevin, we've taken on this scary theatre and then he told me how he had this great love of the Old Vic, how he came here as a kid with his parents, and I didn't have to ask him twice. It was a good lunch! Hahahaha! Seeing as I've got this enormous mouth, I was quite surprised that I managed to keep it quiet for two years. Kevin said it was miraculous that I'd kept it secret."

I ask her if she ever gets nervous. Well, she says, when she took over the Old Vic she was such a wreck that she contracted meningitis.

Ah, another bonding opportunity. I tell her that I had a similar illness when I was a child and missed three years of school. "Oh, my God! I was so ill. I remember the day we launched the theatre I almost had to put lollipop sticks up my back to keep straight."

We talk more about seduction. I ask her how she managed to win over Hillary Clinton. "What does Hillary want, that's what I would think to myself. What does she need from me. What can I give her? How can I help her? OK, she's got this thing called Vital Voices, giving women a voice in politics. So she might ring me up and say..."

"Hi, I'm Hill," I say in a big, booming voice, playing the part of Hillary.

"Stop it!" Greene says. "She doesn't talk like that. I think we're getting off the point here."

I tell her that her white, knobbly suit looks lovely, like woodchip. And so do her boots. I ask her if flirting is important. "Oh, for sure." Give me an example? "What, you want me to flirt with you? Well you're a journalist, you have to flirt with me to get me to talk to you. You know what it's about."

I don't think I do, I say, because you're giving nothing away. "No, but you've got to flirt with me. You go like this," and she talks softly and patiently, "and in the end you get what you want. I suppose it's about charming people, getting them to do things that maybe they don't particularly want to do. Have you got a girlfriend?"

Not only have I got a girlfriend, I have two mature children I say, spotting another opportunity to get close - Greene also has two children. But I don't think she has heard. "... Well, you must have flirted with her at one time!" she continues. "I can just see what this article is going to say... But we're not talking about flirting going to bed, we're talking about coercing people or helping people to make up their mind that they want to do what you want them to do."

One of the best flirts she ever met was John Major. "He had this wonderful ability to listen. Funnily enough, I think a lot about flirting is listening to people; not talking to them, listening to what they say, listening to what they want."

Two years ago, the press started to call her and Bourne New Labour's top power couple (she and Bourne - who contributed to the Tories before he married her - are substantial donors to Labour). Indeed, they came under scrutiny because Greene threw a £5,000 birthday party for Peter Mandelson at the same time that Bourne was trying to buy the Millennium Dome. She says it was awful. "Suddenly you're propelled into this 'power couple of London' thing, and you know it's only downhill from then on. I hated it. I hated it the whole time because it was nothing to do with the arts, nothing to do with what I do, it was suddenly: Robert's Jewish, or his father is an emigre from Poland, or stories about his first wife. He was portrayed so horribly."

Yes, I say, I remember the quote that he's absolutely charming, but if you crossed him he would rip your testicles off. She shakes her head with sorrow. "He's tenacious and generous and soft really. He's much nicer than me." In what way? "He never says a bad word about anybody. I mean I go, 'Oh, Robert, she looked awful ! Or this was awful !' And he goes, 'Oh no, no, you shouldn't say that, Sally. That's not very nice.' "

What does she see herself as primarily - an entrepreneur, a party girl, or an enabler? "I definitely don't see myself as a party girl. Although I can't say I don't relish a first night! Hehheh! But I see myself, I suppose, as someone who can make things happen."

Are the parties as great as everybody says? She gives me a disapproving look. "You want to talk to me about theatres, you want to talk to me about what this woman has achieved," she protests. But we have been. "You should say to yourself, 'Well, hang on, she's started three theatres, she's put on 50 shows'. Don't you want to ask about me how I got this theatre, how I got that theatre, how I did this, how I did that, rather than parties?"

Well, what about politics, then? "I don't really want to get into the political side of things." Has Blair been to her parties? "Tony has never come to my party." No? " Never . Never invited him."

Look, she says, she only gives one party a year, at Christmas, and it's nothing more than a singsong round the piano. Who's on piano? "Moi. I love London, and why not celebrate that you live in a great city? And if it means occasionally giving a wonderful first-night party, fine. If I glamorise theatre, fine. People like it, and that's fine!"

Do you have to be famous to be invited? "No!" she says. She looks at Linda, the photographer. "I'll definitely have to invite this guy to my party next year. He's obviously wanting to come." She looks at me, and pauses. "If I don't invite you, I'll do a video. Promise!"