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4 Extra Debut. From Beethoven to Wham! Actress Joanna Lumley shares her castaway choices with Kirsty Young. From 2007.

From Beethoven to Wham!

Actress Joanna Lumley shares her castaway choices with Kirsty Young.

Joanna first found fame as the high-kicking glamour-puss Purdey in the 1970s TV series 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鈥檇 like to hear during a single island day.

First broadcast on 91热爆 Radio 4 in May 2007.

45 minutes

Last on

Fri 23 Oct 2020 04:00

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