Down in the South of France it feels like summer, even in February. Warm sunshine dapples the ochre walls, the Mediterranean is a-sparkle and love, crazy love, is in the air.

For here in Marseille, Pamela Anderson has found herself in the grip of un grand amour; she and a French footballer called Adil Rami are madly in love, oblivious to the language barrier and the 18-year age gap that might have kept less reckless lovers apart.

For a woman who is no stranger to unlikely romances — she married her first husband rocker Tommy Lee four days after they met — could this be her most surprising affair yet?

Consider the evidence. Pamela is the pneumatic 50-year-old former Baywatch star, who’s had three husbands, two sons and is now an actress-turned-activist whose pet causes include animal welfare, the environment and refugees. Adil is a 6ft 4in international defender, who is also the father of twin baby boys from a relationship with an equally pneumatic French lingerie model.

Pamela Anderson (pictured) has lived with her lover Adil Rami for the past six months in Marseille. She shared why she chose to leave Malibu behind

Yes, it’s complicated, but Pamela and Adil met last summer and have been inseparable ever since. ‘Oh, I don’t want to talk about him,’ she cries. ‘We want to protect our love. There are a lot of fake and phoney relationships out there, people just trying to get noticed.

‘He does not want this and neither do I. He is not with me because he wants attention and vice versa.’

Yet somehow she cannot stop herself. It’s just too intoxicating. ‘He cares about me deeply,’ she tells me. ‘We have a very healthy, simple wonderful life without all the bells and whistles. We both have our children to try to squeeze into the equation, but he is amazing. He is a good guy, really a good guy.’

The couple have lived together for the past six months in Marseille, where he plays for the local team. Life is good, despite the fact the sea views remind her daily of the plight of the refugees trying to reach Europe from Africa. ‘Every time I put even one foot in the Mediterranean, I think of them,’ she says.

She attends Adil’s home games, sitting high up in the grandstand where the bright plumage of her plunge cocktail dresses and tousled blonde hair make her look like an exotic bird nesting in an eyrie of navy padded jackets.

After eight months together, the couple have their routines. He trains relentlessly in the outdoor gym installed at their new home, while she likes to shop in the markets for Provencal vegetables to cook vast suppers for her hunky beau.

She never lets her glamour standards slip, though, even in the kitchen, and hasn’t worn flat shoes or jeans since leaving the U.S.

‘I don’t do sweatpants,’ she says, preferring a Pammy-tastic domestic uniform of ‘little vintage slips, sexy things.’ Sometimes Adil looks at her like he can’t believe it. ‘He calls me an alien,’ she says.

Pamela (pictured with Adil) says she has told Adil to be prepared for the day she falls apart after he asked how she maintains her youthful look

An alien?

‘Yes. He says; “Come on, you must be 30 not 50. Show me your driver’s licence, this is impossible, impossible! There are plenty of girls younger than you, how do you do this?” But I say to him, how old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?’

It is the sort of thing one imagines Madame Macron once whispered across the pillow to Emmanuel, but can Pamela’s relationship survive long-term like theirs? On this point she is philosophical.

‘Well, I say to Adil; one day, I am going to fall apart, you know that? So be prepared. Let’s be in love for as long as we are in love and if there is ever one day, you look at me and go ugh, well, I can always go and live in another country.’

When Pamela Anderson moved from California to the south of France last year, she wasn’t looking for romance. ‘I didn’t expect to fall in love, which is always when it happens, right?’ she laughs.

I’m writing a book called Saving Women From Feminism — it’s going to be a hot potato!

Then approaching her 50th birthday, she was driving fast towards a major crossroads in her life. She had been divorced from three husbands, while her two sons from her marriage to Tommy Lee were all grown up — Brandon (now 21) was travelling the world as an actor and model, musician Dylan (20) was forever in recording studios.

Pamela still had her activism, yet sometimes a certain lonesomeness began to creep across the threshold of her home in Malibu.

‘I would cook and make dinners and no one showed up. I was lonely and I felt, I am done here,’ she says. ‘I had empty nest syndrome, all sorts of syndromes. Hormones! Hot flushes! Moods! It was all happening.’

She had always feared the menopause because her mother ‘had a really hard time with hers’. Yet here it was bearing down upon her, before she was ready for it.

‘I knew something was changing. I definitely feel a change, I think I am peri-menopausal, or whatever it is called. I felt very emotional, very poetic, very dark and dreamy.’

Pamela (pictured in Baywatch in 1992) revealed she rented out her Malibu home for a high season rate of £35,000 per month whilst she visited St Tropez

After spending the previous four years and another £5 million (‘all the money I had ever earned’) on rebuilding the Malibu property she bought for £1.3 million in 2008, Pamela determined it was now or never.

She decided to rent out her home for a high season rate of £35,000 per month and go to St Tropez for the summer. Friends such as designer Dame Vivienne Westwood had told her she would love it there, and she did.

‘I didn’t know whether I was going to go home or not. I had this fantasy a lot of women have at this point in their life, which is to create a new life.’

It was Dame Vivienne who introduced her to Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder who was accused of rape in Sweden, whom Pamela began visiting at his hideaway in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in late 2016.

She’s always been coy about the exact nature of her friendship with Assange, but she sees him every time she is in the capital, most recently just a few weeks ago. She thinks he is a ‘genius’ and that the rape charges (now dropped) against him were ‘a set-up’.

Pamela revealed she doesn't like deprivation of any kind, but she hasn't eaten meat for over 20 years as a vegan

Once upon a time she would insist that she loved him and found him ‘romantic and brave’. Now she admits that they never had sex. ‘I have such a connection to him but it isn’t a physical relationship, no,’ she confirms.

Pamela and Adil met at the end of May last year at the Monaco Grand Prix. He and his former girlfriend Sidonie Biémont (age 36) split amicably at the start of 2017, though they remain on good terms. Not least because they are parents to twin boys, Zayn and Madi, who were born in September 2016.

‘He has a lot of integrity when it comes to family,’ says Pamela. ‘He is very loyal.’

After Monaco, Adil and Pamela spent a month living in Aix en Provence before moving to Marseille where they stayed in the InterContinental hotel for another month while looking for a home together.

Coincidentally we meet today in the same hotel, the most luxurious in the city. Of course I had expected her to be a bit of a bombshell, but nothing quite prepares one for Pamela in the flesh.

I’m just trying to make veganism sexy

Here she comes now, clipping across the marble foyer in her spike heels, wearing a polka dot dress that clings to every curve and provides a straining frame for the double whammy of her full beam cleavage.

Her waist is tiny, her blonde hair is sexily tousled and men fall silent and just stare, a petrified forest of stunned testosterone, as she sashays past.

Brunch has been laid out in a suite upstairs, where Pamela ignores the elaborate platter of fruits and goes straight for the buttery croissants while ordering a cappuccino.

I thought you were vegan! ‘I am, but I am a very naughty vegan. I haven’t eaten meat for over 20 years, but I am not strict about veganism because I don’t like depravation of any kind,’ she purrs, in her breathy little voice.

She and Adil don’t even abstain from sex before he has any important fixtures, as demanded by some footballing disciplines.

Pamela stars in a new Ride Responsibly campaign called ‘The Signs’, in partnership with sexual assault charity PAVE

‘Not if I’ve got anything to do with it,’ she says, almost with a titter. Then she looks more serious. ‘No, that rule does not apply to us.’

In her defence, she points out her vegan shoes and her vegan handbag, talks of the vegan restaurant she opened in St Tropez in the summer (but which closed after four days).

‘I’m just trying to make veganism sexy.’

To this end, she has just ‘created’ a vegan champagne called Amourfou. ‘I didn’t realise most champagnes are filtered through animal organs, did you?’ When I wonder aloud if her infamous implants are vegan, too, she says; ‘I’m not talking about my boobs. I don’t want that to be the headline.’

She is bare-legged, smells of fake tan and has a welter of bruises on her upper left arm, a legacy from her recent appearance onstage in Germany with magician Hans Klok, known as ‘the Dutch David Copperfield’. Ten years ago she played a season with him in Las Vegas as his assistant and has reprised the role on his current European tour.

He doesn’t speak very good English, I don’t speak very good French, but we have the body language

‘What girl doesn’t want to be a magician’s assistant, right? It is one of the most glamorous things ever,’ she cries.

Her star turn includes appearing (and disappearing) in a dangerous trick called Fire Spikes which involves her being locked in a box into which a grid of flaming spears are inserted.

Her hair gets singed, her arms get bruised but she doesn’t care, because being on stage is such a mad adrenaline rush. ‘And a nice change from my activism.’

Ah yes, Pamela and her crusades. Falling in love appears not to have quenched her appetite for doing good. In any spare time left after taking vegan meals to Assange (‘Bring me something exotic!’ he says), Pamela has been appalled by the touring animal circuses in France and is lobbying mayors to have them stopped. She is also campaigning to have foie gras production banned and wants Uber and minicab drivers everywhere to be vetted for criminal records — to help keep women safer.

If you search YouTube you’ll see her looking impossibly glamorous in a recent Ride Responsibly ad about the dangers of app-hailed taxis.

Pamela claims not to be a fan of today's feminism as she believes it has a victimhood element

‘Just because it is an app doesn’t mean it is safe,’ she says. ‘A young girl who is alone and has been drinking and needs to get home is very vulnerable. This is not victim blaming, it is just saying put some more thought into it.’

She is not a fan of today’s feminism. ‘I hate the victimhood element of it. It is demeaning.

‘A lot of women still like to be sexy, still want men to make the first move — which is empowering for us. We don’t want to be victims and we don’t want to make enemies of men.

‘I am writing a book called Saving Women From Feminism. It is going to be a hot potato!’

For someone who has been through multiple divorces and been explicitly objectified throughout her life — Richard Branson once sold Virgin cola in a ‘Pammy’ shaped bottle — she remains a diehard romantic.

Despite her past as a Playboy centrefold and the infamous leaking of her sex tape 20 years ago, she is anti online porn and dating apps, both of which she believes to be destructive to human intimacy. She is keen on sex, but only with someone she loves.

‘The best sex is in a committed relationship, knowing someone’s nuances and sensuality is what makes you a good lover. You must be brave enough for intimacy.’

Has her sexual desire diminished over the years? ‘I don’t think so, no.’ Could she ever imagine getting married again? ‘Of course!’ She is funny and friendly, easy to like. After moving her clothes and her dog Zuzu to France, it looks like our girl is in it for the long haul. She is learning to speak French, so that she and Rami can have deeper discussions about tofu and politics.

‘He doesn’t speak very good English, I don’t speak very good French, but we have the body language, the language of love, another communication level that is deeper than words,’ she says. ‘We have something special. It is amazing how it just clicks.’

If only Rami could be put on prescription for menopausal women everywhere! What a tonic that would be.

In the meantime, he has clearly given Pamela Anderson a new reason for living, but she still needs some extra help with the changes in her mind and body.

To this end, she has made an appointment with an Ayurvedic doctor. ‘The moodiness, the tension. Sometimes I am not myself and I realise that I need to manage it a bit better. I don’t wish to torture everybody around me,’ she says.

And what else does she wish for in her mad, magnifique world of Fire Spikes and vegan champagne and fugitives and football?

‘I want to do a French film with a cool, edgy director and speak French in it. Something I could be really proud of,’ says the former Baywatch star. There is nothing like something new to make you feel younger and younger.’

Pamela supports Ride Responsibly in partnership with sexual assault charity PAVE.