Love letter to merciful avenger

Press, 17 June 1980, Page 12

Love letter to merciful avenger

By

DAVID SWIFT

in the “Observer”

Tt’s love letters in the sand time again; Joanna Lumley this week, the actress with those great, clear scrubbed features, the mushroom hairdo and endless legs who rushes around beating the daylights out of thugs in The Avengers. The surprise was that she is far more complex and intelligent than that daft series suggests. Sniffing around the perfume of her personality was a lot of fun and, just sitting in the living room of her flat in Holland Park, told you lots of things. The room was chocked with paintings, there was bric-a-brac like old weigh-

ing scales, baroque mirrors, magazines everywhere and about as many flowers as the Chelsea Flower Show. It was a very warm room. It' had the eye of the sun.

On the sofa a huge, bloated cat, a bit of a nutcase, was moving sideways with great handfuls of hair falling off its back. There were lots of old books, first editions one guessed, rare and treasured.

Joanna, dressed only in a shirt and pair of knickers, wandered about totally unself-consciously, her huge eyes moving about as she talked.

Clearly she is used to having cameras around and was mostly fretting about the carpet men who had called that day and

told her the rooms had to be cleared before they put the carpet down. Wrestling with the furniture had done something to her back. She was very cross with them. Didn’t she try to use her fame and influence oh the men to do it for her?

“I tried that, but it didn't work either.” A daughter of a retired Army major, there’s a bit of golly and gosh about

her but She neutralises all that by swearing to great effect. She talks almost non-stop and worries a good deal. “There’s something I’ve forgotten,” she was saying as she was > ironing her dress for a “do”-that night at the Savoy. .- ‘

“I know there’s some-

thing I’ve forgotten. Just know it. My memory isn’t what it used to be. I go to Marks and Sparks to buy a bra and then forget why I’ve gone there.” Later in the evening, driving down through the West End, she was still fretting about it. “I know there’s something.” That was cut short when she began shouting at a dawdling driver ahead of her. “Get a move on Noddy.” Lately she’s been vexed by the slaughter of baby ssals and has been cam-. t paigning publicly about them. She’s also a vegetarian. ; 1,. There’s a new television

series coming up, but she says she’s not that well. off and couldn’t afford to buy a house or a flat now. She tells you a lot of' things like that — very chatty and open — sometimes dropping her voice to barely a whisper as if she’s got some State secret for sale. . ■ <;. She wasn’t letting on about any of her blokee, apart from aaying there were a few around. She moved closer and. her voice dropped,;, fingersplaying with one ef many rings, eyes widening:m« press have given, me affairs I’ve never had . and killed a few I did have. After a while you learn.”