Opinions from a viewfinder

David Bailey makes Gordon Ramsay sound like a vicar giving his Sunday sermon. Such is his love of expletives, barely a sentence is delivered without three or four blasted out in quick succession. “I'm b****y dyslexic, so the short, rude ones are all I can spell,'' he says, with a wheezy chuckle.

Best known for his iconic images of the Swinging Sixties, Bailey has just produced his first “political portfolio'' — a collection of Westminster's finest.

And politicians have never looked so good. There is Gordon Brown, beaming at the camera with the most winsome of smiles, and David Cameron looking very much at home in a sharp suit.

“Politicians aren't normally big on my agenda because it's too easy to go for them — too easy to stitch them up,'' Bailey explains. “But with this, I just did them how I found them.''

So, how did he find them? “I was pleasantly surprised, actually,'' he says.

I ask him if it is true that he broke the ice with a nervy Prime Minister by asking him which one was his dodgy eye? “Yeah, I did. Why not? He was charming, actually. Bit of an introvert, but charming. When I got in the car afterwards, I said to my wife: ‘This bloke has charmed me'.''

Cameron, he says, was a “sincere, easy-going kind of guy'', but he was less impressed by the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg. “Telling everyone how many women he's been with, what's that all about?'' he asks.

A Londoner through and through — Bailey was born in Leytonstone, east London, and now lives in King's Cross — he voted for Boris Johnson simply because “I like a sense of humour''.

Beginner's luck

Now 70, Bailey started taking photos as a teenager when he was posted in Malaysia with the RAF while doing his National Service. He returned to the East End determined to avoid career paths of “gangster, car thief or boxer'', and found work as an assistant to the studio photographer John French.

No one was more amazed than Bailey when, aged 21, Vogue offered him a job. “The class thing — you cannot imagine what it was like. If you had a Cockney accent, you were gone.''

Bailey recalls early in his career taking some pictures to Jocelyn Stevens, then editor of Town magazine, who mistook him for the messenger. “It's much easier now — it's not about birth any more, just money, although I'm not sure which is worse.''

Together with such photographers as Terence Donovan, Bailey captured the glamour of Sixties London, where photographers rubbed shoulders with actors, musicians and royalty.

In 1964, his Box of Pin-Ups, a set of poster prints of celebrities and socialites, including the Beatles, Mick Jagger and the Kray twins, secured his place as an icon-maker.

Two years later, the director Michelangelo Antonioni immortalised Bailey in Blowup, a film about the life and perks of a London fashion photographer, played by David Hemmings and largely based on Bailey, who dated many of the great beauties of the day, including Jean Shrimpton and Penelope Tree.

Were the Sixties as much fun as they looked? “They were fabulous, yeah, but only for about 500 people in London. I don't know how much fun they were for the coal miners in Yorkshire.''

Back then, he says, celebrities were a different breed to the “vacuous hordes'' of today. “Nowadays, everyone is famous for being famous. They don't have much going on up here,'' he says, prodding his forehead.

“Take her, for example,'' he continues, pointing at a Polaroid of Jordan. “Nice girl and all, but it was literally, knock, knock, anyone at home? And guess what? Nobody was!''

The only downside to the Sixties was “that whole feminism thing. I mean, what was all that about? I was brought up by two women — my mum and Aunt Dolly [Bailey's father walked out when he and his sister were young].

“Tough as an old gypsy, Mum was. I was surrounded by strong women, so it had never even occurred to me that women were anything other than equal to men.''

Bailey has been married four times. Former wives include Marie Helvin and Catherine Deneuve. The actress Catherine Dyer is wife number four, to whom he has been married for 25 years.

Joys and laments

“Yes, I've been a lucky boy,'' he says. “They were all great, but my wife now is just about the best thing that ever happened to me.'' The couple have three children — Paloma, 22, Fenton, 20, and Sascha, 13.

“Look at this,'' he says, proudly showing me a photograph of his wife he took recently. “Not bad for 46, eh? Haven't I done well?'' Looking at the short, grey-haired man in front of me, whose considerable potbelly is pushing every button on his shirt to its limits, Bailey has done very well indeed.

Despite his track record as a lothario, Bailey has managed to stay on good terms with his former flames. What is his secret? “A sense of humour and curiosity are the most important qualities in a woman, as far as I'm concerned.''

Citing the time Deneuve told him of their divorce, he says: “We barely saw each other, we were both so busy, and one day she called and said, ‘Bailey, do you know we're divorced?' Are we? I said. ‘Yes,' she said. ‘Now, we can be lovers.' See, even then she was making a joke.''

These days, Bailey prefers classic portraiture to modern fashion photography, of which he is scathing. “The problem is digital,'' he laments. “It makes all the girls look the same. I mean, [Steven] Meisel is a great photographer, but they all look like something from outer space — like they've been created on a computer. And guess what? They have.''

So how much longer can he continue?
“What, you mean give up? No, never. Well, not until that white feather lands on my pillow.''