She has starred as a Bond girl and raised millions for charity. She’s been kissed by an Oscar winner and petitioned a Prime Minister.
And yesterday Joanna Lumley visited Aberdeen to captivate an audience of businessmen and women with tales from her life.
The actress and activist – best known for her starring role in comedy series Absolutely Fabulous and for her fight for her Gurkha Justice Campaign – was the guest speaker at the annual Inverurie Locos FC Business Lunch.
More than four hundred people packed into the Grand Ballroom at the Marcliffe Hotel to listen to Ms Lumley regale them with anecdotes from her acting career.
She began with her fleeting time as a Bond girl – Ms Lumley played “the English one” in the 1969 film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
She said: “I was so important I didn’t even have to have a character name. I was one of Blofeld’s angels of death.
“My acting part was mostly crocheting. But, in life, you have something no one can take away from you – I am a Bond girl.”
The 70-year-old smiled when discussing her time on the set of The Wolf of Wall Street with Leonardo DiCaprio, but denied a rumour she asked for a kissing scene to be written into Martin “Marty” Scorsese’s script.
She added: “They sent me the script and I saw the line ‘he leans over to kiss you’ and I signed right up.
“DiCaprio is a proper man and a proper actor. I think I was able to teach him a thing or too.”
However, when she turned to her battle to secure justice for Gurkha soldiers seeking a home in Britain, the room fell silent.
In 2008 the star, whose father served in the 6th Gurkha Rifles, became the public face of the campaign to give all veterans who served in the British Army the right to settle in Britain.
She said that, after the veterans finally won their battle, a group of Gurkhas visited Gordon Brown in Downing Street to say thank you.
And she added: “All the bells at Westminster Abbey began to peel. It wasn’t choir practice, they were ringing for the Gurkhas.”
After a standing ovation in the Marcliffe hall, she mused: “I absolutely loved today. I’ve been to Aberdeen once or twice before only fleetingly.
“This was another fleeting visit, but a really meaningful one.”
