Jane Birkin: “intact” and minor at her marriage to John Barry, “ridiculous dress” … Her confidences without filter

The sad news was shared this Sunday, July 16, 2023: Jane Birkin, iconic singer of British origin, died at her Parisian home at the age of 76. A residence at the end of which his daughters Charlotte Gainsbourg and Lou Doillon were photographed following the tragedy, while tributes to the artist poured in on social networks. In order to salute the memory of this legend, also muse of Serge Gainsbourg whom she had ended up leaving, France 5 offered viewers the rerun of the documentary Jane Birkin and us in the first part of the evening, produced in 2022 and in which she indulged without filter, with her British accent as cult as she is.

The opportunity for her to return to her first love affair, not yet major, with the famous composer John Barry. Thirteen years separate them, enough to make the teenager’s family wink: “My parents did a negotiation in the garden, as seen in a film by my brother. My dad was trying to negotiate that he wait until I was 18, not 17. A matter of months! John Barry won, we see my brother winking and filming it all from the roof of the house. And we see me leaving with John Barry, crossing the house and there I come home without his E-type Jaguar with my basket and my ridiculous little dress. Then we see the car leaving with John Barry and me. And my father caressing his car with a melancholy look…“, she says in the documentary, with supporting images. And she assures her: she was “intact“, or virgin to put it more bluntly, at the time of this union in 1965 in Great Britain. At the time, the young Jane Birkin had not yet tried her luck across the Channel. “John was the first person“, she specifies.

He asked me in marriage and presto! I was his

Little Laszlo’s grandmother also explained: “He was so clever ! And so talented. To see him in front of the London Symphony Orchestra, recording Goldfinger (the soundtrack of the film, editor’s note)… In addition, he had an accent from the north of England. It was divine, that. He asked me in marriage and presto! I was his.” Again, his relatives are not ecstatic at the idea: “Everyone told me: ‘No, no, no: don’t do that!’ It was obvious to everyone around that it probably wouldn’t last. But hey, I was very stubborn.”

Two years of union before divorce

From this relationship was born in 1967 Kate Barry, a little girl eagerly awaited by her mother who died tragically in 2013. It was two years after their marriage that Jane Birkin asked for a divorce from John Barry, before migrating to France to become actress. “It must have been such a drag for John Barry to come home and there you have this 17 year old woman-child who runs his bath and gives him his newspaper“, she confided with hindsight to our colleagues from The Guardian in 2020.