THE death of novelist Jackie Collins at the weekend and the devastation of her older sister, the actress Joan Collins, reminds me how lucky I am to have a sister.

The Collins sisters were close, although they lived on different continents. Sisters, when they are close, have a relationship like no other.

I can certainly understand why Jackie Collins kept her breast cancer a secret even from her sister for six years, presumably because she didn’t want Joan to grieve for her in advance, changing the nature of their relationship towards the end.

My relationship with my sister is one I would not swap for the world, so close I feel we are almost like twins, operating on the same wavelength and understanding each other without words.

It comes, of course, from a shared history, which is priceless to us because it is unique, and began when I was born: my sister, then 15 months old, reacting by pulling my hair.

From that moment on, we spent an idyllic childhood arguing and laughing in equal measure.

She the bright spark with tons of energy, a fabulously fun personality and so naughty she had my parents in despair.

I was the quieter one – I didn’t need to shine because my sister did it for me – and so her naughtiness was extremely entertaining. I could sit back and watch her do things, and then have to suffer the consequences.

She drank a bottle of Cinzano when she was five, thinking it was lemonade, and ended up in hospital. She went apple scrumping, she knocked on people’s doors claiming it was bob-a-job week (it wasn’t) so she could get money to buy sweets, and she and some friends once set a field on fire (yes, the police were involved and, yes, my parents had to pay compensation to the farmer).

There was always something going on, and so it was a shock when hormones kicked in in her mid-teens and she went all quiet and grumpy.

It was like she had become a different person overnight, and I didn’t like it. It was the only time in our lives we didn’t get on, mainly because she had got into the habit of playing a record, the same one (Martin by Soft Cell, if you’re interested), loudly and repeatedly into the night. It kept me awake night after night, and so while she was grumpy with hormones, I was grumpy with tiredness. Cue sibling distance.

It was exacerbated when I got my first job and my sister complained to our mother that I had “changed” – but I said the same thing about her because at about that time she met the man who would become her husband, and suddenly we both had different lives. We were heading in different directions and we both had to accept that each had grown up, our childhoods now left behind.

Our relationship was now different, especially when she had her first child in her early 20s, and more mature – we talked about relationships, about motherhood, about anything and everything, and we could tell each other anything. Now we know all of each other’s secrets, which is quite scary when I think about it.

She also continued to stand up for me like any big sister would; I remember the time, for example, when my sister didn’t like the way one boyfriend was treating me and pushed him up against a wall, hissing at him: “Don’t you ever do that to my sister again!” He didn’t.

My sister is Jackie and Joan Collins combined: she’s beautiful like Joan and fun like Jackie – and still with her mischievous streak (in early middle age). We share a naughty sense of humour that only we – and our mother – can understand. We can find humour in the most difficult of situations and my sister is so droll and witty many people have said over the decades that she should have been a stand-up comedian.

The statement by Joan Collins that she is “completely devastated” by Jackie’s death brings a tear to my eye and reminds me never to take my sister for granted.

I’m so glad Oz, the Sumatran tiger that killed a female zookeeper at Hamilton Zoo in New Zealand at the weekend, will not be put down.

Dreadful though the death is, the tiger was simply behaving like the predatory creatures tigers are. Captivity and closer contact with humans will not change their instincts, and it always astonishes me that some people call for the killing of an animal, a captive one at that, after an attack.

Larger wild animals will never be “domesticated” enough to be docile – they are unpredictable and dangerous killers and should always be treated as such.

Captivity is abnormal for creatures such as tigers, and if humans choose to keep magnificent creatures in cages, whether for profit or to preserve an endangered species, they should at least treat them with the respect they deserve. Death in return for behaving perfectly naturally should not even be an option.