Soap-Stud & Blue-Movie Girl is latest work from Newhaven author

David, aged 80, said: “I’ve loved Hollywood novels from Harold Robbins in the 1960s through to Gore Vidal and Jackie Collins. Soap-Stud and Blue-Movie Girl are the first two parts of a trilogy about the remaking of a classic movie, in this case Bette Davis’s famous weepie Now, Voyager from the 1940s.

“Soap-Stud covers the early life of Jason Howl, a lifeguard from San Diego who’s meant to be like any of the hunky guys who started out as TV extras and got a small part in TV soap operas. Jason has, if you’ll excuse me saying so, a large part that gets exposed on the internet after the filming of a nude scene in the soap he’s in – I've recycled the title of the BBC flop set in Spain – Eldorado.

“Joylene, who becomes Katharine Kane, is a beautiful mixed-race girl from Arizona. She could be played by Meghan Markle if the Duchess wants to go back into movies! Joylene is recruited by a talent scout into the world of adult movies, but she gets the chance to move into serious acting in a new Carry-On-style comedy called Poor Nellie, playing Nell Gwynn opposite Peter O’Toole as King Charles II – I hope O’Toole would have jumped at the role! Most of the other actors in my book are invented characters. Charles's Queen Catherine is played by Dame Helen Highwater but I’ve taken the small liberty of bringing Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and Diana Dors back to life in the 1990s. Diana Dors makes a cowboy movie with Jason Howl in Soap-Stud, and Katharine Kane will meet up with Marilyn in the sequel.

“This is a book which should appeal to readers who miss getting a new Hollywood novel every year from Jackie Collins. And there’s a strong satirical element which is where the influence of Gore Vidal shows through, I hope. My previous four novels all had a gay element, which there isn’t so much of in Soap-Stud, although I think gay readers will very much enjoy Jason’s big nude scene and its consequences.

“I was a friend of Diana de Rosso, the former soprano who ran the Grimaldi restaurant in East Dean for many years. Diana was the sister-in-law of superstar actor James Mason.

" I was introduced to her by Cecil Brock, a mutual actor friend in London who’d worked in Los Angeles and made the acquaintance of stars like Joan Crawford and Ramon Navarro. Diana and Cecil told me stories of Hollywood in its heyday and encouraged me to write a movie-world novel. I’ve put Cecil Brock into Blue-Movie Girl; he plays Judge Jeffreys in the Nell Gwynn movie.

“I suppose the starting point for the novel was seeing too many Hollywood remakes, which almost always are a travesty of the original film. Jason’s soap is a travesty of Dallas and Dynasty, and the Bette Davis movie he remakes with Joylene will be a travesty of epic proportions.

“My first novel was original published as Florence of Arabia in 1998, then reissued as Shaikh-Down ten years later under my other pen-name of David Gee. It’s a scenario for regime change on an island in the Persian Gulf.

"A gay British banker and an American air hostess get embroiled in a plot to assassinate the Amir.”