"A cut above the rest."

She calls herself Triple D and you don't have to ask why, because everything' about Dolly Parton is larger than life. Especially her sense of humor. "Ah'm sorry ah'm late — mah front got out of the limo half a block ahead of the rest of me," she drawls in her particular Southern style. And you're off and running on a one-woman whirlwind of a show. Dolly has had the "showbusiness itch" ever since she was a dirt-poor kid in Tennessee, composing hillbilly songs while she baby-sat an ever-increasing number of brothers and sisters.

Her story is a country legend but she never tires of telling it. sounding as homey in a Hollywood hotel as she does when going back to visit "the folks". She's looking triple terrific and she knows it. "Ah've just been in for a little maintenance," is how she describes it. 'Well, you maintain your car, don't you? And ah've got just as many miles on mah clock. Ah'm a B.I.G. believer in cosmetic surgery. Whatever makes you look good makes you feel good." Dolly, 47, had her overhaul in a swish Beverly Hills clinic.

It was supposed to be private and discreet but a photographer snatched pictures of her emerging swathed in bandages and Dolly, direct as ever, admitted everything. She was self-conscious about her looks from an early age. "I was an ugly little ol' young 'un." she says, the drawl softening as she gets serious about her past. "I needed to prove I was special and I was determined that one day I'd look special." She had her nose reshaped and her teeth bonded in the late Sixties when her recording career took off. She's since had more work done by her Beverly Hills dentist, giving her one of the most brilliant smiles in showbusiness.

In 1983, when she was 37, she lost 18kg in weight. "I had to," she says. "The year before, I'd been filming a scene for The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas where Burt Reynolds had to pick me up. He fell flat on his back and had to have a double hernia removed!"

She also had "a few little nips and tucks" to deal with loose skin and had her breasts lifted and improved. She later had liposuction on her thighs and hips — a process in which the fat is literally sucked out — then had her eyes lifted and the puffiness beneath them removed. Dermabrasion on her upper lip helped remove tiny lines, while lasers were used to lighten 'liver spots' on her upper chest. In the late Eighties she had a forehead lift, a facelift and had the muscles under her chin tightened.

Then, in February this year, Dolly spent around $40,000 on more surgery. She had the crow's feet around her eyes removed, along with lines on her lips, chin and neck. More Ilposuction got rid of the fat on the top of her hips. Dolly remains anything but bashful about her catalogue of cosmetic operations: "I'll always have a bit more maintenance work done when I think it's necessary — and I won't lie about it." she says.

All that cosmetic surgery was necessary because she's in the public eye and doesn't want people looking at a "tired old face". "People in airports and stuff go 'Hi Dolly!' and look right down at my chest instead of at me. It's so stupid. Of course I do flaunt 'em! "The tabloids once said that the doctors were alarmed by the baseball-sized implants in my breasts. I thought. 'Well, thank goodness, 'cause they were the size of watermelons before!'" Dolly's view is it's all a storm in a D-cup.

She'd far rather talk about her latest LP or film or Dollywood, her theme park near her childhood home in Tennessee." "The busier I am, the better I like it." she says, adding with a wink: "Make sure there's no T in busier." Dolly has her own film and TV production company, writes her own songs, tours with her band whenever she can, plays Aunt Dolly Fix-It to the 200-strong Tennessee Parton clan, lives between homes in Beverly Hills, New York, Hawaii and her Smoky Mountains ranch and still claims to be happily married to her reclusive husband of 27 years, businessman Carl Dean.

"I see him more than the public is led to believe." she says, getting serious once again. "I never stay gone more than three weeks at a time. I work eight to 10 days a month on the road. I work a lot out of Nashville but I usually manage to sleep in my own bed. "And I never ask Carl to get involved in showbusiness. When I did a Christmas special featuring my family. I didn't ask him. I'm sure he would've said, "Hell no, you know better than to ask'."

There have been as many rumors about Dolly's love life as there have been about her breasts, and she chooses to joke about them all. "What else can they say about me?" she asks, "I mean, how many boob jobs can I have?" She is serious, however, when it comes to her career. Behind Dolly's Tennessee twang and blonde wigs, there's a method actress just busting to get out. Critics praised her work in the 1991 TV movie Wild Texas Wind, in which she played against type as a singer accused of killing her abusive lover.

She's looking for more films such as Steel Magnolias, which she says combined a good script with "great gals". During filming, she and her five co-stars, including Julia Roberts and Shirley MacLaine, took the sleepy Louisiana town of Nagi-toches by storm. "I have five sisters who are some of the best friends that I have in the whole world, and I related to these five ladies in the way that I do my sisters." says Dolly. "We became real close."