Joanna Lumley
Desert Island Discs
BBC
4.3 • 14.3K Ratings
🗓️ 13 May 2007
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the actress Joanna Lumley. She first found fame as the high-kicking glamour-puss Purdey in the 1970s show The New Avengers, but the role that cemented her in the nation's psyche was Patsy in Absolutely Fabulous. A striking beauty with a cut-glass accent she had, until then, been cast as a certain sort of sexy toff. Yet in AbFab she stole the show as a shallow, free-loading, alcoholic has-been - famous for her towering chignon and withering one-liners.
Along with displaying a formidable comic talent, it was a role that toyed cleverly with her public persona, hinting at her own beginnings as a model at the precise moment in the 1960s when London really started to swing. As she contemplates being marooned, she abandons the make-up and glamour of her on-screen life and embraces island living - collecting firewood, eating from shells and preparing her evening fire before the moon rises and she chooses the eight tracks that she would like to hear during a single island day.
[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]
Favourite track: Symphony No 7 in A Major by Ludwig van Beethoven Book: A huge atlas Luxury: Video camera + film.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello I'm Krestey Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. |
| 0:05.0 | For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. |
| 0:08.0 | The program was originally broadcast in 2007. My cast away this week this week is the actress Joanna Lumbly. She came to fame as the |
| 0:32.0 | high-kicking glamour pous perdi in the 1970s |
| 0:35.1 | show The New Avengers, but the role that cemented her in the nation's psyche was |
| 0:39.2 | Patsy in absolutely fabulous. A striking beauty with a cut-glass accent she had |
| 0:44.5 | until then tended to play a certain sort of sexy toff. Yet in Abb-Fab she stole the |
| 0:50.0 | show as a shallow freeloading alcoholic has been famous for her towering |
| 0:55.1 | shignon and withering one-liners. Along with displaying a formidable comic talent, |
| 0:59.9 | it was a role that toyed cleverly with her public persona, |
| 1:03.4 | hinting at her own professional beginnings as a model |
| 1:06.2 | at the precise moment in the 60s when London really started to swing. |
| 1:10.7 | Joanna Lumley, let's start with Patsy then. What did you think when you first |
| 1:14.2 | saw the character on paper? Well she didn't really emerge until sort of |
| 1:20.1 | episode two or three and even Nodina wasn't as kind of wild they both grew like |
| 1:24.8 | ghastly sort of septic funguses in the corner you know they just got worse and |
| 1:29.3 | worse and worse and Pat's hair got taller and taller and the smoking became more and |
| 1:32.4 | more obsessive until they were on about 120 a day. |
| 1:35.6 | Their language got fouler, their behavior got worse, but it kind of grew out of it. |
| 1:39.8 | It grew out of performance really. |
| 1:42.6 | When you had that script from Jennifer Saunders, |
| 1:44.7 | who was at that stage, of course comedy, royalty |
... |
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