Hats are COMPULSORY at my table

Dame Joanna Lumley on how she celebrates the big day, her present from Margot Robbie and why she isn't as similar to Patsy as everyone thinks

- ARIANA LONGSON

The festive season is edging closer and even Mariah Carey herself has declared that it's time to start getting ready for the big day. All I Want For Christmas Is You is already being played on some radio stations! And it's not just us who get excited when we hear the Queen of Christmas' vocals... 'God bless, Mariah Carey. My Christmas isn't Christmas without that girl,' laughs Dame Joanna Lumley as she chats to Woman's sister magazine, woman&home. So, what does the Absolutely Fabulous star's big day look like? '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,' Joanna, 79, says. But that isn't the case. 'I love old Pats. She lives alongside me, but she's not me,' she adds. Here, the actor reveals all on how she celebrates the 25th, the Hollywood A-lister who handmade her a tree decoration and the present she'd love to receive.

The main event

No Christmas is the same in the Lumley household, as Joanna herself explains. 'Every year we have a slightly different one. Often we're in our little cottage in the Dumfriesshire hills in Scotland, which is beautiful. We used to get snowed in and have power cuts, so Christmas was by candlelight.'