How to look absolutely fab at 71
Eat vegetables, climb stairs, try not to look fussy, and never wear shorts in the city, Joanna Lumley tells Brigid Keenan
Among men, Michael Palin holds the title. But I hereby nominate Joanna Lumley as the Nicest Woman in England. Everyone agrees – even those (like me) who hate the Garden Bridge idea. She is modest, open and charming to all – witness her current travel series about India on ITV.
She owes this, she says, to her ‘rather kind and nice parents who were sticklers for courtesy and unexpected acts of kindness’. They were also ‘rock solid’ when, aged 20, in 1967 – an unforgiving era for young women ‘in trouble’ – she found herself six months pregnant. Her son is now aged fifty – ‘Fifty!’ she cries – and she is the proud and loving grandmother of his two young daughters.
Lumley, now 71, and I share an unusual number of things – apart from having grandchildren of the same age (and, I learned in the course of this interview, using the same lipstick, Maybelline Super Stay 510). We were both born in India, had soldier fathers, grew up overseas, returned to the UK on the same troopship, the SS Franconia (albeit in a different year), did not go to university, and embarked on careers in fashion in the Sixties.
After a month at the Lucie Clayton model school, Lumley became a house model for the designer Jean Muir. ‘I was the one she made the garments on in the studio, tutting away to herself as she worked,’ says Lumley, ‘I learned a huge amount from her, and I still have masses of her clothes which I wear all the time. They were so beautifully made.’
Lumley still refers to her friend, engagingly, as Miss Muir. Her other heroes are many and varied, from Tommy Steele to Angela Merkel and the Duchess of Cornwall – ‘She has had to face a barrage of abuse for years and yet is one of the nicest and funniest people I know.’
For all that Ab Fab ridicules the fashion business, it is clear that, in real life, Lumley is well-grounded in that world. Leaving Jean Muir, she became a photographic model.
‘In those days, we had to drag our own shoes, gloves, scarves, hairpieces and make-up around the studios. There were no stylists. We learned to style ourselves, improvise, so we were quite important. I still cut and dye my own hair. A few of us old shipwrecks are still around.’
Lumley is never out of the public eye – receiving a BAFTA award, attending a charity do, a memorial service, an opera first night, appearing on Gardeners’ World or presenting her Indian journey. She is always busy.
Does she ever need professional advice with her outfits? ‘There are wonderful people who can help and, if I got stuck, I would ask them. There’s Rebecca Hale, who did the clothes for Ab Fab (and remember, Patsy was always dressed elegantly until she unravelled through drink); and Jillie Murphy, who did the costumes for Lumley’s 1970s series, The New Avengers.
‘But you get a bit clever when you have been a model and you know what works – fashion was my job after all. For a travel series, I find out in advance what is expected – you would obviously not wear the same clothes to milk camels as for a tea party with a maharaja. And I always hear Miss Muir in my ear scolding, and I try not to look fussy.
‘I also try, in my humble way, to look respectable. I can’t stand the way people go round in cities wearing shorts or other inappropriate stuff.’
Lumley has been a vegetarian for 45 years – ‘Animals don’t need to die for me.’ Her rules are: Eat, Eat Veg, Don’t Eat Too Much. She is a size 12 (‘But I’d wear a size 16, if it looked good – I cut the labels out anyway, because they are scratchy’). She doesn’t bother with a gym because her house has five floors and she is running up and down all day.
She has two favourite products that she has used ‘for ever’ – Astral cream and Rive Gauche perfume. She takes Imedeen tablets for her skin, flax seed oil for joints. Everybody in her world, she says, has had ‘procedures’.
‘I am not talking about this’ – she drags her cheeks back with her fingers in a joke facelift – ‘but, with Botox, you can have tiny bits done and it really makes a difference. I am freakish about my mouth looking like a hen’s bottom, with all those lines around it that they say come from smoking – but they actually come from living.’
She smokes, as does her husband, the conductor Stephen Barlow. As a child, her teeth grew ‘into tombstones – and they still are’. Lumley uses a whitening toothpaste.
Later, she had spots. ‘I positively don’t want to look natural – I never had good enough skin to be able to have a naked, shiny face. I prefer to have my head dipped into a bag of flour; I always powder over Max Factor Pan Stik or foundation.
‘I don’t want subtlety anywhere near me, I positively relish drawing a new face on to my face – new lips, new eyebrows.’