12 times Joanna Lumley saved my life

GREY DAYS ALWAYS CALL FOR A DOSE OF JO!

Joanna as Cotswold mafia mother dressed Judith in ‘Fool Me Once’ THE BEST PHONE FACE!

Firstly, an apology. I am not good on substack, I’m not posting enough and I’m not engaging enough. I’m better on Instagram land, that is my true poison but lets face it, that is probably going to be eaten up by ‘he who must not be named’ but then again BBC radio 4 news won’t write a news reading script without giving these mortal nasties daily, unbuyable PR so who am I kidding. And due to this admission, I realise, also, that I’m not really a proper writer, how can I be I don’t really read books. But I have to and will try and continue this new social media ego massaging circus. Ah, sorry another admission, if you are on social media, if you manage to do anything involving publishing or getting a deal of any sort that involves you, then well done, you have an ego, an ego can be a good thing it makes stuff happen.

Joanna in her Hidden Caribbean travel series

Its grey as a dish cloth outside and I should be printing off things for my tax return, the printer is on and the folders are out. To be honest I struggle to properly wake up until its 3pm most days and my shoulder is giving me bad jip, I have a big horrid knot. Luckily I have some old Codine tablets. Anyway quite often, to get through life, I channel someone very dear to me, someone who is not mortal to me, she is too beautiful but she has a campaigning clout that is elegant and this is a very rare thing.

Joanna in Lewis 2009 - Counter Culture Blues pulled in 6 million viewers when it aired on ITV on Easter Sunday.

If you have followed me on Instagram land for a while you will know that is comes with a few commonplace posting guarantees. Flamingos, flower arrangements, farm animals and Joanna Lumley. So why? Well love at first sight I suppose when you see someone famous and they are for all the things you love in the world you are naturally drawn to them.

I came across Joanna as a child years before I watched absolutely fabulous. I was actually one of those quite often nightmarish, militant child vegetarians and this is how I first properly saw Joanna Lumley on the cover of the veggies magazine that is VIVA! vegetarians international voice for animals as it was known back then. Before this I had seen her in James and the Giant Peach as Aunt Spiker where she did her own makeup and starred alongside Miriam Margolyes… ‘Oh the children have gone…but you can play with their garbage’ The dark humour in me was cast that day and I’ve been glad of it ever since. Later, when my grandad Ted was suffering badly with dementia and in a dreadful care home, so bad that it was shut down weeks after his death, we would as a family sit in his little room and have Jo on taking us down the Nile river, she was a comfort. That is what makes famous people become stars to people if they give comfort through what they do and put it out into the world, you are forever glad of them. Watch Joanna and the Nile I think its her best travel documentary series, its so beautifully done.

You know what really annoys me, the more we hear and read, if we are given access to it is the amount of wasted money, billions of late and how the cost of Joanna’s beloved garden bridge now alas firmly scrapped was completely taken apart and destroyed really by the media. I only need mention the shameful waste of HS2 and the number of trees and woodlands destroyed by it needlessly as a comparative of this injustice. What a wonderful thing to be proud of as a nation that bridge would have been and Joanna rightly would have been its Queen it was her baby. As Joanna said after an attempt of being taken down on the Vanessa Feltz show ‘Its like you have given someone a bunch of flowers and they have been thrown down and stamped on’ And yes, the bridge would have cost money but so does everything and it would not of been wasted money, it would have become after the build a living thing appearing on every national celebration of London no doubt.

Joanna in the donkey sanctuary garden - Chelsea Flower Show.

Anyway we don’t have a garden bridge in the Uk but we do have Joanna and I am glad everyday of her. She is probably the only person I can forgive for adoring her lucky clan of city foxes so much so I don’t actually think we would make fabulous neighbours, no, I’m a huge fan and forever in her debt. She actually makes it worth going to Chelsea Flower show for, you didn’t really think I went for other reasons did you? ! I could have put 12 photos of Joanna on this post, it is still a new year so I liked the title but that would have come across as really crazed so I’m not going to! x

Joanna with a moth during a photoshoot at the National History Museum