Fear, Love And My Biggest Regret

As she prepares to come to Australia for a unique stage show, 72-year-old British icon Joanna Lumley tells Louise Gannon about her unusual marriage, the joy of being a granny, facing her fears and why age is her friend.

- Louise Gannon

Joanna Lumley is something of a contradiction. On the surface she appears all things perfectly proper, from her Queen’s English diction to her friendship with Prince Charles and the impeccably tailored trouser suit she is wearing as she sits, as straight-backed as a meerkat, in a bright airy office in London’s Soho. But the reality is the actress is as much of a rebel and rule breaker as her Absolutely Fabulous alter ego, Patsy Stone.

At 72, she lives her life exactly as she wants to – steamrollering past government officials to visit far-flung, often dangerous countries for her travel series or to fight for the rights of Indian Gurkha veterans to claim British citizenship. In Nepal she’s a national hero; in Britain and Australia an entertainment industry icon.

There is nothing conventional about her from her warm greeting (she leaps to her feet, clutches you to her bosom and purrs: “Darling, let’s really enjoy this chat, shall we?”) to her 32-year marriage to acclaimed conductor Stephen Barlow. As devoted as they are, they spend months apart while she is working all over the globe. Do they talk for hours on the phone to make up for not seeing each other?

“God no,” Joanna says, horrified. “I can’t bear all those scratchy, patchy calls on a mobile telephone from some remote part of the world where no-one can actually hear you talking. I find it very inconsiderate to burst in on someone else’s time like that. I can’t bear mobiles. I carry one only to take photographs, and for the people at home I love and miss I write postcards, so they can read them in their own good time and see a picture of where I am.” How does her husband cope without speaking to his wife? She smiles. “Oh, he’s got used to me and my ways. It’s exactly why we’re so very well suited.”