COVER Joanna Lumley
For treasured actress and presenter Joanna Lumley, Christmas is a time to take stock and value what’s important in life
Who wouldn’t love to have Joanna Lumley round for Christmas drinks and nibbles? She’d look highly decorative, be the best company and – being the perfect guest – we bet she’d even help with the clearing up. But these qualities, admirable as they are, are merely festive gift-wrapping. The woman has integrity, emotional intelligence and a huge heart.
So it’s highly fitting she is one of 100 famous faces sharing their life journeys in the recently published book Letter To My Younger Self, presented by The Big Issue. The compilation of celebrity chats was devised and edited by The Big Issue’s book editor Jane Graham, from interviews conducted over the last 12 years. “Back in 2007, I had a brainwave,” she says. “I had long been thinking about how I could
encourage subjects to talk about their lives in a revealing and honest way. It struck me that the one person we all try not to lie to, the one person who has known us through our best and our worst is ourselves. I wondered how very successful people felt, looking back on how they were before their big dream came true. Many subjects have subsequently told me that our conversations pulled up longburied memories while others said that its intimate focus on home truths and personal values made it feel like therapy.”
Here we publish extracts from Joanna about her childhood days, kindness, love and the power of friendship… “I was born in India, raised in Hong Kong and Malaysia and went to my first boarding school at eight, which now seems paralysingly young. It seemed par for the course, as my parents had been brought up abroad and sent home to school. I especially loved my second boarding school, an Anglo-Catholic convent in the hills behind Hastings. The nuns wore blue stockings and were brainy and lovely. There were 70 boarders and I was happy as a clam.
“We were very innocent teenagers. By 16 we may have kissed a boy on the cheek. I was a bit spotty, with problem hair. “The music was fabulous
– it was the beginning of The Beatles, The Everly Brothers and there was still a bit of Elvis going on – all listened to on Radio Luxembourg on transistor radios underneath bedclothes. It was pretty darned thrilling! On Saturday nights we would listen to 45s on a Dansette.
“If we could, we would have all looked like Brigitte Bardot or Claudia Cardinale, with their tiny waists, stiff petticoats and pink lipstick. There was a lipstick called ‘Pink Capri’ and even the word Capri seemed too exotic to speak. We were besotted with the idea of riding on a Vespa, wearing silk scarves like Sophia Loren. Being mistaken for a French woman was the height of my ambition.
“I would tell my younger self to concentrate; I was a show-off, a comedian, a clown. We were so vague and dim about the future – when people were revising I drew pictures in my rough book. The idea of actually studying filled me with horror and I never wanted to go to university – I couldn’t wait to get out into the world. I was already mad-keen on acting but usually had to play men’s parts because I was so tall. So when Patsy in Absolutely Fabulous started wearing moustaches it was already second nature. I loved making people laugh.
“I’m pleased the lazy, lively little girl was a teenager long ago; if little Jo was 16 now it would be a different story.
‘We are like trees – we grow more and more circles and layers as we grow older but inside there is still always the person you were when you were tiny’
There would be the tyranny of social media. Girls are worried about their weight, what people think of them and what they should be wearing, and that is horrifying. Those things didn’t matter a jot to us. Dipping our petticoats in sugar water so they went stiff was the nearest we got to trying to look nice.
“In those days virtually anybody could be a model. London was swinging and suddenly one was in the middle of it all. We did our own makeup and hair and went everywhere by Tube. We were in control of our lives. There were not many rules – when I got a Mini, I’d drive where I needed to be then leave it in the middle of the road!
Our flat in Earls Court seemed like paradise, even though we shared rooms. We were poor as rats but happy if we could scrape the £9 rent between the four of us.
“There was an extraordinarily slightly hippy-ish feeling that money
was not the object. Today money is the object and that has turned the world into a different place – quite sour, hard-nosed and heard-hearted.
“I was 21 when I had my son. Having someone in your life that’s so much more important than yourself changes things hugely. I’d just started acting and suddenly had to pay the bills, put food on the table and buy baby clothes. That sobers you up. Before, one was quite dizzy.
“There were times when I was absolutely skint, particularly before the New Avengers which came along when I was 30. Trying to get work is the hardest thing in the world, and when you’re an unemployed actor, people see the desperation in your eyes. But playing Purdey, I worked solidly for two years with the best directors and actors. It was sensational.
“Jennifer Saunders and I are as close as can be. In Ab Fab Edina and Patsy are inseparable and in real life, although we are grown-up women with husbands, children and grandchildren, you can’t put a cigarette paper between us. Playing Patsy spanning 25 years has been the best fun in the world.
“We all love each other so much. We have to cherish those who bring us joy and remember to say, ‘By the way I love you’ and tell strangers who’ve been kind, ‘You’re a nice person.’
“When a huge talent is taken away, like Victoria Wood, it reminds us. It is so sad to think that we will have no more of her incredible work. She had the most extraordinary skill.
“I’ve always loved getting older, so being in my 70s is fabulous. I’ve always felt just like me, so the numbers are incidental. You never lose the little you within you. We are like trees – we grow more and more circles and layers as we grow older, but inside is always the person you were when you were tiny.
“To be in my 70s and still working. I’ve been very lucky. Mind you, I’ve always worked jolly hard.
“This year is our 30th wedding anniversary. My husband Stephen and I look at each other and wonder how it happened.
”I would tell my younger self that one is powerless until one decides to be powerful – any of us can put on a Batman cape. I’m not a lawyer, nurse, teacher or any of the things that are really useful but when you are an unskilled person like me but have a kind of fame you can use it to attract the oxygen of publicity towards something that will make other people’s lives better. It’s a great privilege I try to use responsibly but never for political reasons; it’s for the good of the planet and all it contains.
“My happiest day was probably my 12th birthday. My parents gave me the pair of flat, cream-coloured sneakers I’d longed for and I was in a beautiful dormitory with lots of funny people. I remember thinking ‘I’ll remember being 12 because this is the best birthday ever’ And I feel like I’m 12 every day – it’s quite wonderful.”