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Gurkha rights campaigner Lumley is The Times's Briton of the Year | After campaigning successfully on behalf of Gurkhas seeking residency and other rights in Britain, actress Joanna Lumley is The Times's Briton of the Year. By sheer dint of her personality, a charm that could melt
icebergs and a voice like silk, Lumley has managed not only to get the change
in policy she and her fellow campaigners wanted, but also left the Government
looking clumsy, foolish, leaden-footed and duplicitous. The sight of Lumley ambushing
Phil Woolas, the Immigration Minister, in front of the television cameras and
inveigling him into doing a live press conference before he knew what was going
on was one of the broadcasting delights of the year, followed closely by the appearance
of Gordon Brown all but prostrating himself before her as he capitulated to her
demands. Lumley was not the only one campaigning for retired Gurkhas to be given
the right to live in Britain, but she was the most visible. For a while it seemed
as if no television news bulletin was complete without a shot of Lumley proclaiming
the Gurkhas' battle cry "Ayo Gorkhali". And there can be no doubt that she was
responsible for their victory. Small wonder that when the campaign was over she
was hailed in Kathmandu as a goddess and had a mountain in Nepal named after her.
The truth is that Lumley has long been regarded in this country as little short
of a goddess, or at very least a national treasure. Post-victory her stock rose
even higher and there were calls of "Lumley for PM" (no doubt sensibly she shows
no signs of wanting to go into party politics). The affection in which she is
held runs deeper than her glamour and instantly recognisable voice. Rather, it
is that she has a combination of qualities that give her an appeal far greater
than the sum of its parts. She is elegant and beautiful, but also modest and down-to-earth;
earnest and passionate, but also self-deprecating and funny; charming, with a
disarming lightness of touch, but also very, very determined. Messrs Woolas and
Brown never stood a chance. The key moment came after that seeming government
betrayal, when Brown told the Commons that the Government was looking into the
case of the five Gurkhas who wanted to come to Britain "as a matter of urgency",
only for the five men to receive letters of rejection the next day. Lumley and
her fellow campaigners were all set to denounce the Government at an impromptu
press conference when she chanced upon Woolas. Negotiations were held and the
two of them addressed the cameras. "I think we are all agreed that we are going
to be able to help in the formulation of new guidelines," Lumley announced, daring
Woolas to contradict her. "So, that will be wonderful." The minister blathered
about "proper processes", his face a mixture of fear and wonderment at this creature
who seemed to have taken every ounce of any power he ever had. Victory was inevitable.
That Lumley, 63, should be such a doughty campaigner might not come as a surprise,
given her background. The daughter of an officer in the 6th Gurkha Rifles whose
life was saved during the war by one of his men, Tul Bahadur Pun, Lumley was brought
up in Malaya where her mother, a keen mountain walker, taught her how to deal
with snakes. During the Malaya "emergency", her father would go off into the jungle
with his Gurkha troops, to reappear several weeks later, thinner and with a long
beard. After a spell in Hong Kong, she went to boarding school in England, a place
that seemed to her "strange and cold and pale and misty". She left school with
one A level and dreams of a glamorous life, a combination that led to a career
as a model. From there she moved into films, landing small parts in movies including
On Her Majesty's Secret Service until she got her big break as Purdey in The New
Avengers, a high-kicking fashion plate with a pudding basin haircut: Joanna Lumley,
national sex symbol, had arrived. That she was by then a single mother, the result
of a short-lived relationship in the Sixties, did nothing to affect her popularity.
Other parts followed, including six series of Sapphire and Steel - more than enough
to pay the rent but nothing that would elevate her standing beyond that of posh
blonde totty. Then came Absolutely Fabulous. Her character, Patsy, drank, smoke,
swore, took cocaine and had sex with younger men. She proved that Lumley could
laugh at herself, and get the rest of us to laugh too. From then on Lumley was
on a roll. Committed to the causes she believed in, she was both fearless and
prepared to get her hands dirty. In documentaries she poled up rivers and spent
nine days on a desert island for the Girl Friday documentary, during which she
made her bra into a pair of shoes. Even her smoking seems somehow endearing. In
2007, in a bar in Sheffield, she confronted a man with a gun. "I do hope you're
not going to use it," she told him. "Are you in some sort of trouble? Can I do
anything to help?" Naturally, he waited until the police arrived. |
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