THINK of the world’s most famous women and ask yourself which one would you choose for a really good night out? Not Posh Spice. No matter how hard you tried to dress up, you would still end up feeling like a fat lump in charity shop clothes. Not Madonna. She’s far too bossy. Not any A List Hollywood actress: all they’d want to talk about would be themselves and their plastic surgery.
I would choose Joanna Lumley, aka Patsy in Ab Fab.
There would not be a dull moment, what with her perpetual name-dropping, swigging from bottles of Bolly and angling for celebrity attention everywhere you went.
You couldn’t exactly call Patsy a role model, could you? God forbid. But she is someone most of us would dearly love as a companion. And, you get the feeling that the character probably isn’t that far removed from the real Joanna Lumley, without the drunkenness and outrageous behaviour, of course.
Joanna Lumley just looks like a fun person to be around.
Recently, we have seen a more serious, very passionate side to the actress. I am talking about her campaign on behalf of the Gurkhas, the brigade of courageous Nepalese soldiers who serve in the British Army. She wants all Gurkhas to be given equal right to settle here, no matter when they served in the British Army.
For once, the headline writers in all the papers have been in sync. The front pages screamed as one: “Joanna Lumley for prime minister, absolutely fabulous.”
It’s not as far-fetched as you may think.
Here we have a woman, albeit famous, who has managed to bring Great Britain’s shambolic government to heel with nothing but a couple of snaps of her elegant fingers.
The actress’s outspoken bolshiness has been rather reminiscent of an excellent TV series called The Amazing Mrs Pritchard, which starred that other Ab Fab stalwart, Jane Horrocks.
So angry at the state of politics, so distrustful of the politicians on offer, local supermarket manager Mrs Pritchard stands on an Independent ticket at the general election, determined to make a point. What starts as a bit of a joke gathers momentum with a couple of heavyweight politicians defecting to Mrs Pritchard's side.
She is a breath of fresh air; she speaks the language people have wanted to hear, and the voters, previously apathetic, turn out in their millions and elect Mrs Pritchard on a landslide.
If Joanna Lumley stood for prime minister right now, I swear she would get in by a landslide, too.
Rather than just mouthing platitudes, as so many politicians do, the actress has said exactly what we are all thinking about those elderly soldiers who have fought so valiantly on our behalf in the past.
The noise Ms Lumley has made not only grabbed the imagination of the entire British public but virtually every MP at Westminster as well.
As many as 200,000 Gurkhas fought for Britain in two world wars – 43,000 were killed or wounded and, between them, they won 26 Victoria Crosses.
Some 36,000 Gurkhas have been denied UK residency because they left the regiment before 1997. What difference does the odd decade make? Can anyone explain?
The government now says it is reviewing its rules for admitting Gurkhas after it lost a Commons vote on the issue.
The idiots in the Home Office have thrown so many obstructions in the path of the Gurkhas, yet – let’s be honest – have simultaneously allowed this country to be overrun by illegal immigrants, some of whom have actually found work within the Home Office itself.
Joanna's support of the campaign to allow Gurkhas to settle in the UK stems from her birth in India to a British major in the 6th Gurkha Rifles.
Her father, James, held the Nepalese servicemen in “admiration and affection" and, accordingly, his daughter has become the public face of the Gurkha Justice Campaign in parliament.
The actress has said: “I can't remember a time when I did not support their cause – I have always felt like a child of the regiment."
The disgusting way they are being treated clearly pains her deeply. It is almost as if she has taken it as a personal insult.
We have known Joanna for years as Patsy. Perhaps now she will be remembered as the iron fist in the velvet glove, for the courage and leadership she has displayed over the past year or so.
The “real” Joanna Lumley has said that Absolutely Fabulous was the making of her as an actress.
“Patsy was a changing point in my life,” she said, “a Muhammad Ali of a part.
“Ab Fab totally reinvented me. Because of the way I looked and sounded, I was always being cast as the nice, middle-class girlfriend. Patsy saved me from all that.”
Joanna also said she’d “do anything to look good; stop at nothing”.
I’m sure she wouldn’t go as far as the dreaded Patsy, who has had so many wrinkle-defying Botox treatments she has become addicted to doses of a chemical she calls “Parralox” which she injects whenever she feels herself sagging, managing to end up looking more grotesque than ever.
Patsy, her make-up applied with a garden trowel, her blonde, lacquered helmet piled impossibly high, is always cutting edge, where-it’s-at, wanting nothing more than a glass of bolly, sweetie.
The woman has presence.
We need someone with presence as Gordon Brown’s government stumbles from crisis to crisis like a drunk man bouncing from wall to wall after breaking his pay packet.
Ironically, Joanna Lumley, unlike Patsy, has been the voice of sober reflection throughout the campaign.
The fact that anyone could even think of deporting old soldiers who fought side by side with us for so long is despicable.
Instead of feting them as heroes, all we can do is try to send them packing.
If ever there was a shameful act which deserves a public apology, this is it.
But, unfortunately, only Joanna Lumley seems to understand the magnitude of what the Gurkhas did for the UK.