{"id":209304,"date":"2025-10-13T04:08:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-13T04:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/209304\/"},"modified":"2025-10-13T04:08:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T04:08:10","slug":"joanna-lumley-says-patsy-still-follows-me-wherever-i-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/209304\/","title":{"rendered":"Joanna Lumley says Patsy still \u2018follows me wherever I go\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

The hard-drinking, chain-smoking Patsy in Absolutely Fabulous once \u00adcomplained that an attempt to go teetotal was the \u201cworst eight hours of my life\u201d.<\/p>\n

Dame Joanna Lumley\u2019s character in the hit 1990s television comedy was so beloved by audiences that she later struggled to find a role which did not \u00adinvolve her holding a \u201ccigarette and a glass of gin\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou get bored quickly as an actor, you don\u2019t want to keep on doing the same thing\u201d, she told the Cheltenham Literature Festival.<\/p>\n

Lumley said that when she got her first break in 1976, playing Purdey in The New Avengers, she was immediately offered \u201ca lot of short-haired policewomen\u201d roles to play.<\/p>\n

\"Joanna<\/p>\n

Lumley said her portrayal of Patsy in the 1990s sitcom made her a household name<\/p>\n

ALAMY<\/p>\n

She took on the role of Patsy from 1992. \u201cAs you can imagine, it\u2019s following me around wherever I go,\u201d she said. \u201cThey say, I think she might have a \u00adcigarette and glass of gin \u2026 so most of my characters, frankly, drink quite a lot. Which is lovely.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost actors just like changing. \u00adPresenting a moving target, so you can\u2019t be shot down. And also so you don\u2019t bore yourself to death.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2022 Dame Joanna Lumley\u2019s Ab Fab way to announce the end of the world<\/a><\/p>\n

In conversation with the broadcaster Emma Freud at the festival<\/a>, she told how her first meeting at the BBC with her co-star \u00adJennifer Saunders did not go to plan. Lumley asked her agent to \u201cget me out of this because I know she hates me and she\u2019s too polite to say\u201d, adding that Saunders looked like a \u201csphinx with a migraine\u201d. She was only persuaded to continue because she thought \u00adAbsolutely Fabulous would never actually get made.<\/p>\n

Lumley described how, in an effort to make Saunders laugh, she gave Patsy a low, gravelly voice, with a hint of Mick Jagger, and created a back story in which she slept with all the rock groups. \u201cJennifer began to laugh and that was it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Jennifer<\/p>\n

Lumley and Jennifer Saunders are pictured together, decades after creating the hit comedy Absolutely Fabulous<\/p>\n

ALAMY<\/p>\n

Lumley, 79, was speaking to the audience about the release of A Book of Treasures, a collection compiled from her decades-long habit of documenting poems, writings and thoughts. She said she had wanted to dedicate her previous book, A Queen For All Seasons, to the late monarch but Buckingham \u00adPalace had refused.<\/p>\n

\u201cHer Majesty does not like having books dedicated,\u201d she was told. Yet a sign of royal approval came a year later when Lumley was made a dame in the Queen\u2019s last New Year\u2019s Honours list. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The hard-drinking, chain-smoking Patsy in Absolutely Fabulous once \u00adcomplained that an attempt to go teetotal was the \u201cworst…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":209305,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[64,63,447,134],"class_list":{"0":"post-209304","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-celebrities","11":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209304\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}