Sweetie, darling!

...it's Dame Joanna Lumley's 80th birthday today!!

All hail!

Many happy returns Dame Joanna Lamond Lumley (born 1 May 1946)

[More here]

There is nothing like one...

...or, indeed a dozen!

The acting dames above, back row, left-right: Dame Joanna Lumley, Dame Floella Benjamin, Dame Twiggy Lawson, Dame Harriet Walter, Dame Penelope Wilton, Dame Maureen Lipman.

Front row, left-right: Dame Virginia McKenna, Dame Sian Phillips, Dame Judi Dench, Dame Vanessa Redgrave, Dame Penelope Keith, Dame Patricia Routledge.

Queen Camilla was with the illustrious Dames to celebrate 400 years since the first Shakespeare folio was published.

The Celebration Of Shakespeare event yesterday, hosted by Gyles Brandreth with the National Theatre and Royal Shakespeare Company, also featured a host of Shakespearean actors including Sir Simon Russell Beale, Sir David Suchet, Jeremy Irons, Julian Glover, Brian Cox, Freddie Fox, Gary Oldman and Robert Lindsay.

I woud have killed to be a fly on the wall...

The Coronation - all eyes were on...

The utterly awesome Penny Mordaunt, Catherine, Princess of Wales (of course), Dame Joanna Lumley and Katy Perry.

[click to embiggen]

Bolly, Stolly, sweetie, darling?

Good grief. I missed a significant cultural anniversary last weekend!

The first episode of Absolutely Fabulous, otherwise known as The Campest Programme Ever, appeared on our screens on 12th November 1992.

Happy 30th birthday, sweetie, darling!

Absolutely Fabulous -Patsy Stone best bits

Ab Fab - Wine Tasting

An inpiration.

Arise...

...DAME Joanna Lumley!

At last...

HM The Queen's New Year Honours List 2022

An Icon

"I've looked forward to being older because you will have that many more miles covered. We mustn't be led into thinking getting old is bad. Growing old is good."

Sharing a birthday as she does with a bizarre mix of names such as Una Stubbs, the Duke of Wellington, Wes Anderson, Calamity Jane, Judy Collins, Romaine Brooks, Glenn Ford, Rita Coolidge, Danielle Darrieux, Bernard Butler, Shirley Horn and Ray Parker Jr. - the one-and-only Joanna Lumley is 75 years old today!

Model, dancer, Ken Barlow's girlfriend "Elaine Perkins " in Coronation Street, "Bond Girl" (in On Her Majesty's Secret Service), "Hammer Horror Girl" (in The Satanic Rites of Dracula), "Sapphire" in Sapphire & Steel, "Purdey" in The New Avengers, the former school friend turned high-class prostitute in Shirley Valentine, "Donna Sinclair" in Dr Willoughby...and, of course, "Patsy Stone" in Absolutely Fabulous - she's done it all!

Nowadays, she has cemented her "national treasure" stakes by not only standing up for the Gurkhas who were being denied British citizenship, but also by stepping into the well-trodden footsteps of Michael Palin, Simon Reeve, Michael Portillo and the rest with several TV series of travelogues (she's done Russia, the Caribbean, the Silk Route, Greece, Japan and India and we're currently watching her tour of Britain).

Naturally, we adore her.

All hail, Joanna Lamond Lumley OBE FRGS (born 1st May 1946)!

Read my tribute to her on her 70th - amd much more over at my other blog Give 'em the old Razzle Dazzle.

Fuck it, jump for joy!

She's seventy years old, you know...

"I find it a great antidote... lipstick and mirrors and hairspray."

"You only have one go at life, which is thrilling. Only you can make yourself into who you want to be. Don't blame anybody else. You are entitled to free fresh air, and that's it. Do the rest yourself."

"I've never felt the constraints of social acceptability."

"If you haven't got taste, money doesn't matter: You'll always look ghastly."

"Getting older isn’t a sin. If you’re alive, you’ll get old. There is no point denying it. Fuck it, if you’ve done how much I’ve done, you are just jumping for joy when you hit my age!"

Joanna Lamond Lumley, OBE FRGS (born 1st May 1946)