Christmas IS MY FAVOURITE TIME OF YEAR!

Joanna Lumley reflects on festive love, treasured childhood memories, a whirlwind 2025 and why George Clooney is 'an utter sweetheart'

- GEMMA CALVERT

A snow-flocked tree shimmers with tinsel and lights, beautifully wrapped gifts are piled beneath, and the scent of freshly baked yule log wafts through the air as All I Want for Christmas Is You plays. And there, at the heart of woman&home's Christmas cover-shoot wonderland, is Joanna Lumley with a glass of perfectly chilled Bollinger champagne in hand.

'God bless Mariah Carey. My Christmas isn't Christmas without that girl,' says the actor, her velvety voice instantly recognisable after almost six decades in the biz.

Five years after being turned down by RADA at 16, Joanna became a single mother (her photographer son Jamie is now 58) and started a career in modelling, before landing roles in shows like Coronation Street, Steptoe & Son and ITV's The New Avengers. Then, in 1992, came the game changer - playing wild Patsy Stone alongside Jennifer Saunders' Edina Monsoon in the BBC's award-winning Absolutely Fabulous.

'Some people might imagine me as Patsy on Christmas Day, rising with three cigarettes going simultaneously and a bottle of Bolly open beside the bed,' laughs Joanna, whose two-decade-long embodiment of the chain-smoking fashion director made her a cultural icon.

There were three Ab Fab specials in 2012, before a documentary last year. Is another reunion likely?

'The answer's no. Jennifer [Saunders] would say no, so I'm saying no for her. It's over,' replies Joanna, without hesitation. 'I never think about Absolutely Fabulous. Half of [the episodes] I never saw, so when people say Patsy lines to me, I don't know what they're talking about. I love old Pats. She lives alongside me, but she's not me.'