Yahoo Finance Joanna Lumley shares what it’s like to meet the Queen
It’s been a busy year for Joanna Lumley. Alongside making a slew of new documentaries, she’s been editing a book, A Queen For All Seasons, a tribute to the Queen in honour of her Platinum Jubilee.
It’s a treasure chest of telling insights, musings and memories of the monarch, and in an exclusive interview in Good Housekeeping’s December issue, Joanna opened up about her personal experience of meeting the Queen.
“Getting an OBE from her [in 1995] was quite something. When she pins your medal on you at Buckingham Palace, you think, ‘Blimey, it can’t get much better than this,’” says Joanna.
“But the truth is that when you meet her, you’re so dazzled that you find yourself talking a load of tongue-tied rubbish.”
The much-loved actor, best-known for her iconic role as champagne-swigging magazine editor, Patsy Stone, in BBC One’s Absolutely Fabulous, recently turned 75, and she’s embracing getting older in every way. She spoke about her seemingly fearless attitude to life, which she says stems from childhood.
“I was always quite a tomboy growing up and I liked doing things I wasn’t supposed to do,” she reflects.
“If someone said, ‘It’s dangerous to step on that,’ I had to do it just to see how dangerous it was. If somebody said, ‘He’s a bad egg, don’t go out with him,’ I had to go out with him; I couldn’t not. And actually, I don’t regret any of that, I really don’t.”
When Joanna was in her early 20s, she suffered a nervous breakdown, which she says changed her outlook on life and made her realise that none of us are invincible. These days, reading is key to helping her feel balanced.
“I have the most enormous pile of books beside my bed: biographies, love stories, old classics. I always do it last thing at night because it releases my mind from holding on to my daytime,” she says.
“It’s also important to remember that life isn’t always for gaining. Sometimes it’s just about treading water, and I think the pandemic has made us do that a bit more.”
Despite her early setback, Joanna’s career has spanned an incredible six decades, and much to our delight, she revealed that she has no plans to slow down any time soon.
“First and foremost, I’d like a good script. Luckily, there seem to be more and more parts for older people than, say, 25 years ago, when there was nothing for women over 40,” she says.
“You’d be a grandmother in a white wig, an insane woman – or nothing. Women always had to be categorised in some way.”
She’s also keeping busy with a different kind of role. Joanna has two granddaughters, Alice, 18, and Emily, 17, and she says that being a grandmother means the world to her.
“They live in the north of Scotland, so it isn’t as though I have them round for home-made ginger cake every week (I can’t even make a cake), and I’m not the person they come to every Wednesday night for help with their homework. But I just adore them,” she says.
Acting royalty and now royal author, it’s clear that Joanna is enjoying the fruits of her success – and long may it continue!
Read the full interview with Joanna Lumley in the December issue of Good Housekeeping, on sale from 27th October. It is available in all supermarkets and online at MagsDirect.
A Queen For All Seasons: A Celebration of Queen Elizabeth II On Her Platinum Jubilee (Hodder & Stoughton, £20) by Joanna Lumley is out 28 October.
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