Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
Absolutely muddy fabulous
As she prepares to host the glittering BAFTAs, Joanna Lumley tells Jenny Johnston why she’s really happiest mucking in down on the farm
Joanna Lumley says the idea of retirement makes her ‘feel quite faint’. She thinks all the best people bow out with a bang. ‘My husband is a musician and he will die at the podium. Or he’ll drop down dead on the keyboard,’ she declares. She would like a similar demise. On stage? ‘Perhaps. Or in a field, with a little lambkin in my arms.’
Since we have spent most of the day in different fields – each muddier than the last – this doesn’t come as a shock. She has looked in her element, in a way that’s hard to fake, however good your acting skills. Alas there have been no lambs today, though she has been holding chickens closer than most of us would dare. And does she hesitate when a herd of cows want to get up close? No. On she strides, resplendent in a tweed jacket, through the cowpat. Were she playing Patsy, her Ab Fab character, she’d fall in, but as Joanna, she is as surefooted as they come.
And she’ll no doubt be equally at ease when she replaces Stephen Fry as host of the BAFTA Film Awards on 18 February, which will air on BBC1. She’s the first woman to host the ceremony single-handedly for 20 years. ‘Honestly, how exciting is this?’ she says. ‘It’s just so unbelievably thrilling. Who thought I’d turn into Stephen Fry?’
Today’s surroundings couldn’t be further from the glitz of the BAFTAs as she chats away with the farmer. Her confidence in the countryside comes, she says, from her mother, who taught her to love all living things, ‘even slugs and spiders and rats’. ‘If you’re taught to love them, you love them. You have to be taught to be afraid too.’
One of the things she finds most irksome about modern Britain is that so many people are squeamish and ‘quite ridiculous’ around animals. There is an entire generation, perhaps two, she complains, who don’t know how to hold a chicken and who couldn’t be in a field of cows without shrieking.
Her son Jamie’s daughters, aged 15 and 13, are ‘tough, good, outside girls’ she says, as she explains she can’t bear children to be mollycoddled. ‘When they were little I’d have them walking through streams with water up to their knees, and rolling down hills.’ Holding slugs too. It seems she’s big on slugs. ‘We’re so wet with our children. We’ve taken animals out of our lives – unless they’re pooches with bows on. Some children have never seen a horse or collected warm eggs. We’ve divorced our- selves from nature. And how feeble we are. We no longer say to children, “Here’s a slug, hold it”. We run for spray to kill it. It’s summed up in that programme I’m A Celebrity. All they do is treat animals as disgusting. They treat the natural world with contempt.’
It’s probably safe to say she’ll never be a contestant in the jungle, which is a shame as she would be quite majestic. For someone who looks as if she spends most afternoons in the spa, Joanna is astonishingly low maintenance. She rejected the offer of make- Joanna with Lynsey de Paul and Christopher Timothy at a protest up artists and stylists for our photoshoot today and pitches up having done her own make-up. ‘I always do. It comes from years of modelling back in the day when we had to do our own. A lot of girls now can’t do that, or they’re afraid of it. But I’m a tough old boot.’ The modelling background was ‘terribly character-building’, though it does sound quite grim. ‘We were considered airheads, too useless to do anything. We were treated like skivvies. When we made the film of Absolutely Fabulous Kate Moss had to walk out of the Thames in a dress holding a cigarette. Everyone was trying to get her warm and she said, “No one is like this in the modelling world.” In modelling you’d be yelled at – “Stop looking so cold!”’
She takes a practical approach to her hair too, confirming she cuts it herself. ‘I first did it aged four, and got a very smacked bottom for it, but I’ve been “done” enough to know how to do it.’ We’re here to discuss crueltyfree agriculture – she’s here in her role as patron of the charity Compassion In World Farming – but before we get onto the nitty gritty she gamely tolerates my fascination with her hair. Can she demonstrate? Cutting your own hair is quite a skill... ‘Don’t be afraid of it,’ she says, holding up locks and chopping them with her fingers. ‘Don’t say “I can’t”. Just do it. It’s like life. If you do something enough – cooking, anything – it becomes a skill.’
She’s skilled at lots of things, but not, it seems, baking. This isn’t a granny who does cupcakes. She went on The Great Comic Relief Bake Off for Children In Need and the producers couldn’t believe she’d never baked a cake. ‘They kept asking, “What’s your signature bake?” I kept saying, “How many times do I have to repeat it. I. Have. Never. Baked. A. Cake.”’ Oddly, for a woman so fearless, Mary Berry terrified her. ‘I was so afraid of her, the kinder she was the worse it was.’
Be Fearless (unless you’re with Mary Berry) should be the Lumley life motto. At the end of a day in her company I ask her if she was always like this – self-assured, unafraid to be outspoken – and she quotes her mother. ‘She said the trick was to fake it. If you hate something, pretend it’s gorgeous. Say, “Could this be more fun? I don’t think so”, then it becomes fun. It works.’
Also getting older helps, apparently. We’re having a snack by this time and she lifts a banana. ‘If you’d never seen a banana before you wouldn’t know how to peel it. You’d be filled with terror, not at all confident about what to do with it. But of course I know how to peel a banana because I’ve done it countless times. Life is similar. It just becomes a skill you understand.’
Her life has been a rollercoaster, but the one constant has been her campaigning zeal. We all know of her efforts to highlight the treatment of the Gurkhas, but her big ‘thing’ is animal welfare. She’s been involved with the Godalming-based charity Compassion In World Farming for 32 years. The charity isn’t a shouty ‘don’t eat meat, don’t kill animals’ operation, rather one that seeks to eradicate suffering while accepting the practicalities of farming. Joanna and the charity’s CEO Philip Lymbery laugh as they recall one of her earliest involvements in 1991, when she, the late singer Lynsey de Paul and the All Creatures Great And Small actor Christopher Timothy were photographed in a cage to highlight the plight of battery animals. ‘There was a nun in
there too,’ she recalls. ‘I think we were trying to appeal to the religious orders,’ says Philip. Joanna nods. ‘She still writes to me. She’s in a closed order.’
Philip says Joanna is ‘the most valuable patron we could ever have’. Why? ‘She has a real depth of understanding of the issues, a real passion.’ The charity’s message, says Philip, is straightforward, ‘We would like people to eat more plant-based foods, eat less and better meat, milk and eggs, from pasture-fed, free- range and organic sources, and join the movement to end factory farming.’
The animal welfare landscape has changed beyond recognition since Joanna began working with the charity. She enthuses about how big guns like M&S and McDonald’s now only use freerange eggs, but there’s still a way to go. ‘All it takes is for people to start saying, “Oh, there are millions of chickens. Who cares? ” There’s an indifference that makes me sick.’ Don’t get her started on fishing quotas and the practice of throwing dead fish back into the sea. ‘I’d make that a crime against nature.’
Joanna doesn’t eat meat or fish and hasn’t for 40 years (‘I can sleep at night knowing I haven’t killed a living crea- ture’). She’d like to be a vegan but practicalities (‘being the guest of honour at a dinner, say’) mean she hasn’t been able to. She’s not sure she could give up cheese, ‘but they are getting bet ter at vegan ones’.
She gets some stick for her way of life, but does she care? ‘People have said, “Don’t you think carrots have feel ings too?” I say, “Don’t be stupid or I’ll have to slap you.”’
Still, she’s nothing if not pragmatic, and accepts we’re not all Joanna Lum- ley. ‘The fact is people do eat meat. We are all about saying, “If you are going to eat meat, please do it as respectfully as possible. Give these creatures as good a life as possible.” There actually used to be travelling abattoirs but EU regulation put a stop to that, meaning everything was as clean as an operating theatre – but in a centralised location that involved a long and stressful journey. A step forward? I don’t think so.’
So the lesson today is that a step forward in compassionate farming can also look like a step back. We’re at Pitt Hill Farm in Tadley, Hampshire, a 2,500-acre operation which the charity insists represents the way to go. Here, livestock are not contained in battery conditions but roam free in fields. Pesti-
cides are not used on the crops. Chickens run free. The owner, Tim May, gives talks about how a farm can be run like this and make a profit, pointing out that intensive farming practices had trashed the quality of the soil; shortterm commercialism had trapped farmers like him in a destructive cycle.
Why is this revolutionary, since it sounds just like farming in the olden days? ‘Exactly,’ says Joanna. ‘So many of these things were considered an advance in some way, steps forward, modernism in farming. But the people who built the Acropolis weren’t idiots. I think we have been a bit vain about thinking we could do it better. Now we can milk 14,000 cows simultaneously with not even a man in here. Well, it can’t be right, I’m sorry.’
She truly is a force to be reckoned with, but the joy of Joanna is that she is funny with it. Just when I think she’s getting all po-faced about the lunch that’s been provided – peering at the selection of chickpea-crammed offerings, she grabs a packet of crisps. She confesses that she has the teeth for a very different diet. ‘I have enormous teeth. I could literally eat tables.’ Her face, she agrees, is proof that the vegetarian diet works. ‘Before, people said children would die without meat. Well, I’m proof that was rubbish.’
It is rather jaw-dropping that she is now 71. Even she is stunned by this. ‘I can’t believe it. How can you be 71? I mean how can you... walk? What the hell has happened. I’ll probably be 91 the next time I talk to you and I’ll say, how did that happen too?
‘Mind you, 71 isn’t what it used to be. When I was young 71 meant permed grey hair and rickety legs and a dowager hump. Ageing has changed. Everything has changed. When I was a girl we all looked like grown-up women, not hippy teenage girls.’
She is a stickler for manners and standards. She gets cross about people being late (‘it’s rude’), and newsreaders who mumble (‘Speak clearly! And for God’s sake sit down’). There are some modern inventions she could do without. ‘I don’t really have a mobile phone. I can see our lives being ruined by them. People I love and admire have them, sitting on the table. It’s an addiction, and nobody sees how dangerous it is. We’re losing the ability to have an enquiring mind. In an instant we can Google when Napoleon entered Moscow, but do we read on to find out why?’
She’s acutely aware of the difference
‘Give these creatures as good a life as possible’
between Joanna Lumley, the celebrity, and Joanna Lumley, the homebird. ‘The Joanna Lumley who is the guest of honour is not the Joanna Lumley who is doing the gardening or who cleans the lavatory.’
Hold on. Joanna Lumley cleans her own lavatory? I ask the question out loud and she looks at me as if I’d turned up half an hour late with my nose in my mobile phone. ‘You don’t believe I do any work at home? You honestly think I mince about? I do know how people live. I don’t like the gold-tapped existence.’
Actually the lavatory cleaning might be shared because she has a cleaner, and zero guilt about it. ‘She’s Portuguese. A wonderful cleaner. She needs the work. I need help when I have a lot on.’ When her son was little she had a series of au pairs. ‘I g ave t hem about thruppence a year.’
Her route through motherhood was quite tough – she found herself pregnant with Jamie at 21, decided to bring him up without the help of his father, photographer Michael Claydon, and, despite a brief marriage to writer and actor Jeremy Lloyd three years later in 1970, raised Jamie as a single mother, struggling to make ends meet. But she clearly adores family life and is very settled with her second husband, of 32 years, conductor Stephen Barlow. Her travels have convinced her we have modern family life all wrong. ‘In the olden days, in the forests of Borneo, the parents all went out to work and the grannies stayed behind. That was quite clever. It’s sad the way we live now, with most of us in different rooms. It’s all fragmen- ted. The world has turned into a strange place, then everyone gets angry and divorced.’
Her domestic life isn’t up for inspection today, but she could see herself eventually living in some sort of commune. ‘Communal living, full of people like me. I’d like to go there before I lose my marbles. There should be places like that for all of us.’ There would be lots of animals too. She doesn’t have pets since her life involves so much travelling, but she does let the urban foxes into her London home, to sit on the sofa.
When she’s on a roll, you can’t help thinking she should be prime minister. I ask what she feels about the Harvey Weinstein saga and she says, ‘I don’t think this has much to do about farming, treasure,’ but answers nonetheless. ‘It’s gone on since time began.’ Did she have personal experience ?‘ I’ m scot-free,’ she says. ‘I have a very handy fist. I would have knocked someone out.’
The subject moves to ageing in showbiz. Does she bemoan the lack of roles for women? ‘Nobody ever wrote parts for 60-year- old women. There have never been lots of films about old people. I’m not being unkind, it’s just a fact. They’re about beautiful people in love or strong men in war. Humankind wants to look at Romeo and Juliet.’
Has she ticked all the boxes she wants to, work-wise? ‘ No. I’m lashed to the tiller. As actors we always want that next great script, then you do it and think, “That was all right, but...” I can’t remember an actor who thought it was good. We’re all thinking, “What is next? I just need one more good one, then I can die.”’
‘Yes, I clean my own toilet. I don’t mince about’