She brightens. "But my men have always been people who've given me intellectual stimulation. That's what I've always needed. I get that from this husband of mine, who's much younger than me but, my God, he's an original thinker. He's absolutely brilliant."
Her late first husband was apparently unamused by the fame she brought to his name. "My son tells me his father wasn't terribly happy about my purloining the Westwood name. I kept Westwood because when I was teaching I had this little boy, and I kept the name for him. I'd have liked to have changed my name [later], but I was advised by Malcolm that Westwood sounds terribly English, keep it. Anyway, I've got Westwood now."
She and her sons are very close, she says. "I know who they are" -- an astute thing for a parent to say of a child. She says: "I always tried to do things by example, even though I was not a very good mother regarding routines and family life. I was not so good like that. And, for example, they weren't allowed to come in and wake me up if they were awake. They were not supposed to come in and jump on you at six o'clock in the morning. Some people let their kids just rule them."
Joe set up the lingerie chain Agent Provocateur and Ben is a porn photographer. "It's true. I mean, he doesn't do very much with it. He's trying to do something with a Web site at the moment." She falters. "It's very particular. It's got a certain look to it. Mmmm."
To Westwood's delight, her 10-year-old granddaughter is a big reader and has just finished The Catcher in the Rye. "Whenever I ring her, the first thing I say is, 'What are you reading?'"
Westwood once said she'd like Richard Branson for prime minister and Robert Fisk for foreign secretary. One of her protest T-shirts reads I Am Not A Terrorist, Please Don't Arrest Me, and she hates Tony Blair. "I think he's vile. I think he's much more of a monster than Margaret Thatcher. Brown has acquiesced in everything he's done, so I would never vote for a party with Gordon Brown at the head. Never."
A politician she likes is Tony Benn. "Tony Benn was an example of somebody who was a very moral person and very clever, and would've made a good prime minister, probably -- I'm not a Marxist, and I shouldn't say that because I don't think he is, either, but that's what he was tarred with."
Did she admire Thatcher? She looks like her, from certain angles.
"The way she dressed was brilliant," she says. "Really, really good. But, no. No. She behaved like a man, really, and I think women could have brought something else." (In general, Westwood thinks it is "better to look important than sexy.")
Her manifesto, for all the hyperbole, is really just a call for people to watch less television, read more books and buy fewer luxury items. It's not loopy at all. "Of course, they will say, 'What is she doing, she's selling a designer collection, how can she be against consumption?' Well, you have to consume things, of course, you have to live, you have to eat. And I'm not saying don't go to the discotheque, they can do that. I'm just saying go less, do other things." She sighs. "It's so much to tackle."
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