She’s wearing silver, high-heeled pixie boots, black velvet trousers and a black hoodie with white skull-and-cross-bones appliquéd up each sleeve, the last thing, apparently, in current New York chic.
If she will forgive the observation, she looks like death warmed up. She smiles that crooked smile. ‘Listen honey, I’m not jet-lagged,’ she says, pulling on an ever-present Marlboro Lite. ‘I’m jet-thumped. I don’t know whether I’m coming or going.’
Ten days ago, she left New York with her lifelong friend Rock (son of Yul) Brynner for Vladivostok where he was tracing his lineage. ‘We’ve known each other since we were five. He’s the first boy I ever kissed.’
She then flew to London (via Korea) to perform at the White Rose Ball this Sunday in aid of the Holocaust Centre in Nottingham. ‘The more we educate young people about the terrible things that happened,’ says Liza, ‘the less likely they could ever happen again.’
At 65, the woman is unstoppable. Four marriages, two hip replacements, one new knee, a near-fatal bout of viral encephalitis, Liza has survived them all. ‘I’ve been down,’ she says, at one point, ‘but I’ve never been out.’
Unlike her mother Judy Garland, who died in London in 1969, awash with booze and pills, aged 47 — and about whom she is ‘bored, bored, bored’ of talking.
But while we’re — briefly — on the subject, she does let slip a sweet, rather revealing tale about Judy.
As a child, she’d wait in the wings at Garland’s concerts, a trembling cup of tea in her hand to deliver to her mother when the final curtain fell.
‘One day, I said to her: “Mama, why are you always so sad when you sing Over The Rainbow?” She looked at me. “It’s what they want,” she said. “Now let’s go get a hamburger.” Forget anything you’ve read. That’s how I remember her. That’s my reality.’
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