‘People mustn’t fall into a victim mindset’
Joanna Lumley talks to Claire Allfree about the perils of cancel culture, the joys of reading and the importance of kindness
Ahead of my interview with Joanna Lumley there is some confusion as to her whereabouts. One publicist thinks she might be in Indonesia. In the event she’s in Stockwell, where she lives with her second husband, the conductor Stephen Barlow, but only part time: last week she was in Scotland and Northern Ireland filming a new UK travel documentary and the next morning will be “up at the crack of dawn” to wrap filming on her new ITV comedy drama Finding Alice, starring Keeley Hawes.
“Funnily enough, I’ve been doing a lot through lockdown,” she booms down the telephone in that familiar voice, rich as plum pudding, before reeling off a list of recording projects including the latest series of her Radio 4 comedy Conversations From a Long Marriage, all executed in line with government guidelines, of course.
“We wear masks, we are distanced, we rehearse in masks, we don’t gang together: the whole shebang,” she says. “I’ve been tested more than any human being in the country. I was tested yesterday, I’m going to be tested again tomorrow. I’m an old age pensioner [she’s 74] so therefore I’m on the cusp of extreme danger, except I’m not of course because I’m as fit as a flea, running about the place.”
Somehow during all this running around Lumley has also found time to record an audio version of a new children’s book, 5-Minute Really True Stories for Bedtime, a brightly illustrated anthology of short factual pieces on the theme of
“night”, from how sharks sleep, to what causes the Northern Lights. Her voice, as she narrates these tales, is truly something, almost seductive in its molten liquorice depths and soothing enough to send the most restless child to sleep, to say nothing of their parents.
Naturally, Lumley is a terrific fan of books in any form. “I’m all for make-believe but there is something thrilling about facts that are often stranger than fiction,” she says with gusto. “Reading and being read aloud to are almost the mainstays of life, they will always give you somewhere to escape. When things are bad or too much to bear, particularly now in this time of infection, a book is the best place to turn.”
I wonder what it would have been like to have been in lockdown with Lumley, who is not one for letting things get her down. Jolly good for the soul I should think, if exhausting.
She is full of sympathy for those less fortunate than her – “we have a garden, the children are grown, the grandchildren are grown [she has one son from a brief relationship in 1967 with the photographer Michael Claydon, and two granddaughters], but we live in an area where people live in a fourth-floor flat with maybe three or four children, and when the parks and playgrounds were locked down it absolutely broke my heart. Because, really, what harm would it do if the little ones were taken out to breathe in the fresh air?”
Children, though, are resilient, she continues, barely stopping for breath. “Children lived through the bombs. The next day they’d be out picking up shrapnel. And parents can keep them occupied, even if it’s helping with cleaning [at this point you wonder if Lumley views life as a sort of permanent Girl Guide camp].
“I don’t want to be too rugger-b----r hearty about it, but we’ve got to show bravery and resilience and common sense and good-heartedness about all this.”
In short, Lumley could give Churchill a run for his money when it comes to morale boosting. The Government ought to hire her as a one-woman public service broadcaster. But perhaps you’d expect nothing less from a woman who has always combined her work with campaigns for an array of causes, from full settlement rights for Gurkha soldiers to London’s ill-fated Garden Bridge.
What on earth keeps her going? “Good genes, I think. I’m lucky to be fit and strong, I’m not an ill person. I’m a vegetarian, which I swear is something to do with it. And I’m optimistic. I’ve been blessed with an amazingly shallow mind, which is pretty much happy all the time. I’m interested in things, so there is always something to do. I don’t get bored and I don’t get lonely as I don’t mind my own company.”
Actually, I suspect she’s also more of a canny operator than she lets on. Certainly her acting career could be viewed as a series of nifty reinventions, from early glamour roles as a Bond girl and the high-kicking Purdey in The New Avengers, to the deliciously comic career-changing g part as the champagne-swigging igging horror Patsy in Absolutely ely
Fabulous during g the
Nineties and a Tonynominated stint in La Bête in the West End and on Broadway ay at the end of the Noughties.
In the past decade, she’s also so established herself self as a travel documentary presenter, journeying up the he Nile and across Russia alongside e trips to Japan, India and Iran.
“I’ve loved being ng a kind of tour leader, as it were. Some of these places are complicated to visit, but if I can take viewers with me on my shoulder then that’s the greatest privilege in the world.”
She’s also known for speaking her mind. Bailed-out bankers and young women who drink till they are sick are just some of the targets that have got caught in her crosshairs.
Does she worry about the rise of cancel culture, in which voicing unpopular views on modish subjects is an increasingly perilous thing to do? “Ah but the dangers for people my age is that you can get slightly detached from how things are
changing in the world,” she says. “When I was young, gay men were still imprisoned and transitioning didn’t exist. So this new culture is very commendable. Of course, one must be anxious about what one says; you never want to say anything that would hurt someone. But people also mustn’t fall into this victim mindset where they are always looking for ways to be insulted. I think we’ve all got to be a little bit more grown up about it, and a bit kinder too.”
Kindness is important to Lumley. Particularly the need to be kind to older people, another cause dear to her heart. “This afternoon, I raced through some things to donate to Mind, which is our local charity shop, and I popped in and had a word and they said what they hate most is the loneliness of the old people who used to come in just for a chat because it was really the only place to go, and now feel they can’t.”
Naturally she doesn’t consider herself as particularly old, or maybe it’s because she never allows herself to sit still long enough to consider it. But surely she thinks a little bit about mortality? “I think with interest and fascination about death every single day,” she says ch cheerfully. “I’m always wonder wondering what it will be like and wh what will be on the other side. Also, many heroes of mine m have died. If Beethoven Beethov and Shakespeare and an Elvis can die, then I can die.” And with that, the indom indomitable Lumley Lu is off b back to w work.
‘When things are bad or too much to bear, especially now, a book is the best place to turn’
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2 Who was the Greek goddess of victory?
3 Kublai Khan was the founder of which dynasty, which ruled China from 1279 to 1368?
4 Which chemical element derives its name fromthe from the Greek for “stone”? 5 With which Danish band did Norwegian singer Lene Nystrøm achieve success in the 1990s on hits such as Barbie Girl and Doctor Jones ?
6 What is the ancestral seat of the Marquess of Bath?
7 Which American television crime d drama featured R Raymond Burr as a p policeman confined confine to a whee wheelchair after b being shot?
8 In the Winnie-the-Pooh Winnie-the books by A. A. Milne, what is the name of the pessimistic donke donkey (pictured, left) ? 9 According to legend, which Anglo-Saxon king accidentally burnt some cakes he was watching over whilst pondering how to defeat the Vikings?
10 Which 82,000-capacity British sporting stadium is nicknamed “The Cabbage Patch” due to a former use for the site?
11 In chess, what is the term for the permitted capture of an opponent’s pawn that has just advanced two squares on its first move by a pawn that could have taken it had it moved only one?
12 What is the surname of mother and daughter cookery writers Jane and Sophie? 13 The name of which French port completes the title of the 1964 musical film The Umbrellas of ___, starring Catherine Deneuve (pictured, above) ?
14 What is the scientific term for the final and fully developed stage of an insect’s life cycle achieved after metamorphosis? 15 With a name from Old English meaning “winding”, the River Wensum flows through which English city?
16 Who was the first woman to win a boxing Olympic gold medal, when she beat China’s Ren Cancan in the flyweight final at London 2012, and then went on to win a second gold medal at Rio 2016 defeating France’s Sarah Ourahmoune?
The name of which 19th-century computing machine can be made by unscrambling the first letters of each answer?
More puzzles, games and brainteasers can be found inside the Sunday section