My mobile? I only turn it on to pay parking fees says Joanna

Joanna Lumley may own a mobile phone but she thinks it is far from absolutely fabulous.

The 71-year- old says she only uses the device to pay for parking, and never texts her husband.

So keen is she to avoid using her phone that she leaves it turned off most of the time. ‘I think we are all trapped by technology into doing far more than we should,’ she said. ‘I do have a mobile phone, because I need it to pay for parking.

‘But I will turn it on, let it warm up, use it to park, then switch it off.’

The actress, who has been married to music conductor Stephen Barlow for 31 years, told Prima magazine: ‘ The thought of being called all day long and then coming home to 88 emails makes me shudder. We’ve all been turned into servants by technology.

‘Stephen and I never send each other texts. You don’t need to communicate all the time.’

However the couple do have their own way of keeping in touch. Miss Lumley – pictured above as Patsy who is never without a phone in the absolutely Fabulous show – has previously told how the pair leave each other notes every day. ‘Some of them are about simple things, like: “Don’t forget to take something out of the freezer for dinner!”,’ she said. ‘But some are more meaningful.’

and despite remaining enviably slender, she insists that she doesn’t go to the gym. In her latest interview, she said: ‘I never, ever exercise. I live in a tall house, I take the Tube, I walk and I garden. I didn’t need to go to the gym in the 1960s – in fact, the gym didn’t exist.

‘and we ate less back then, too, because we ate food that was in season – an imported orange was a bit of exotica.’