Cast away, darling? On a desert island, darling? With nothing but, gulp... water to drink? Absolutely not, darling.
Voddy-swilling chain-smoking Ab Fab icon Patsy Stone would be left trembling in her Manolo Blahniks at the thought of being marooned.
But when the star who so brilliantly played her was challenged to go back to basics, she took it head on and said it proved life is – absolutely fabulous.
Joanna Lumley expected to last three minutes when she was cast away as part of her BBC show Girl Friday.
But she ended up embracing her desert island life for nine days – and facing up to her innermost fears.
Joanna said: “There were no books, nothing to eat or light. I lived like an animal in a cave then on a beach. That is when I stopped being afraid of dying, as we don’t go anywhere.”
She pointed to the ground and said: “We are just here. Literally there. That is what the island taught me as the fish came to see me. Dolphins jumped out of water and looked at me. And little turtles – all these little things – everything was there.
“And they looked at me and said, ‘Its OK. We like you. We are not moaning about the coffin.’”
Joanna, who was left on Tsarabanjina near Madagascar, remembers plans for the show in 1994. “They said, ‘She can be Patsy but without the vodka.’ I said, ‘Well that will last about three minutes. I did nine days.
“I asked to do it on my own without stuff being given to me. I wanted to see how far I could get.
“I had a pound of rice for nine days, some sacking and a rusty tin and that was it. They said there would be running water but there was none.
“I collected water off the rocks and filtered it. I lived on nothing.”
Avid telly traveller Joanna, 74, is back on the box this week in ITV’s Unseen Adventures, in which she shares some previously unseen experiences in countries including Mongolia, Japan and China.
She said: “The truth is what I want to do in my short and long life is show that we are all the same across the world.
“When I go to the desert and meet the Sudanese, they live in houses that are just animal skins spread out over twigs. And they’ve got nothing but goat milk, which they offer you immediately.”
Joanna knows what it’s like to have very little. Despite playing a Bond Girl in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service in 1969, she had to wait a while before she made decent money.
In the early 1970s she was a model and dated rock star Rod Stewart but remembers living on £60 a year.
“I was skint until I got my part in The New Avengers,” she said.
“I was not poor though. I’ve seen what real poverty was. I could live off Marmite on toast forever – but I had no money. It took nine years of slogging and one year I earned £60. You had to go to countless auditions. What kept me going was a sense of optimism and never giving up.”
Joanna’s big break came in 1976 when she was 30 and landed the role of Purdey, alongside Patrick Macnee and Gareth Hunt in telly series The New Avengers.
She said: “That is what changed my life. I had a part and people knew who I was.”
But it took a little while before people recognised her.
Recalling a visit to the shops one day near her North London home, Joanna said: “I was queuing for bread at Crouch End and a woman joined the queue and said, ‘Oh look at you! You look just like Joanna Lumley. I bet you wish you had her money.’
“The funniest thing was although I had this real job it was still poorly paid. It wasn’t until I got the job after that, on Sapphire and Steel, that I managed to get enough money so I didn’t have to always buy the cheapest cheese on the counter.
“You are never secure as an actor. But since then I have never been out of work.” It was her hilarious, double-Bafta-winning portrayal of party-going magazine editor Patsy that really cemented her place as a telly icon and one of our best-loved actresses.
Absolutely Fabulous, in which she starred with Jennifer Saunders, 62, ran from 1992 to 2012, and had a film release in 2016. Joanna reckons Ab Fab fans would rather meet her alter ego than her. They call for more Patsy and Edwina but that is really hoping.
She revealed: “Jennifer says, ‘I am not writing any more.’ She won’t write another film, I promise you. She will never write another series. But she has said that they have not gone away. So…” Away from our screens Joanna lives in London with her husband Stephen Barlow, a conductor and composer, and is mum to James, 53, whose father is her ex, photographer Michael Claydon.
She is also an advocate and human rights activist for Survival International and the Gurkha Justice Campaign – and is more than happy to use her fame to promote her favourite good causes.
Joanna said: “That is why people get celebrities involved in charity. They know if someone Like Martin Clunes or Stephen Fry is involved then the press will go, ‘That sounds interesting. Let’s see what they are saying.’
“If you can bring fame to shine on the right causes then it is worth something.”
- The first part of Joanna Lumley’s Unseen Adventures airs on ITV on Tuesday at 9pm.
