Cinzano of the vermouth market in Europe was measured in the low single digits, sales that placed it a distant second to Martini. As a result of a 1997 merger, Grand Metropolitan became Diageo; two years later, Diageo sold Cinzano to the privately held Gruppo Campari. The Cinzano bicycling team had a central role in the film "Breaking Away". Cinzano was well known in Britain for its humorous television advertisements featuring Leonard Rossiter and Joan Collins. One of these featured the pair on a plane journey, with Rossiter accidentally hitting the "recline" switch on Collins chair, causing her to spill a
Jackie Collins at a writer's conference. "I love what I do. I fall in love with my characters. They become me, and I become them." Collins died on 19 September 2015, of breast cancer, two weeks before her 78th birthday. She had been diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer more than six years before her death but kept her illness almost entirely to herself. She reportedly informed her sister Joan Collins two weeks before she died and flew from Los Angeles to London to appear on the ITV chat show "Loose Women" nine days before her death. Jackie Collins Jacqueline Jill Collins