Joanna Lumley & Anna Ford

Hope you enjoyed your damp Mayday holiday.

I have since found out that it was a double celebration. Yes - it was Joanna Lumley’s 60th birthday. By the way, in spite of suggestions in this blog, it turns out she is neither married to Gary Barlow nor Ken Barlow. She had to settle for Stephen Barlow - a musician - not of calibre of Gary Barlow of course, he just conducts orchestras and stuff.

So, Joanna is about my age and will soon be enjoying free travel on the buses. There the resemblance ends - I’m not posh and I don’t get paid huge amounts to do adverts on TV.
I haven’t got long legs and Joanna hasn’t got wrinkles.

I read about Joanna in a magazine recently. She declared her dislike for ‘fancy products’ and claimed she just smears on a bit of Vaseline as lip gloss and uses plain Astral to keep wrinkles at bay. Oh yes, and she cuts her own hair too. She obviously doesn’t want to discuss the botox and the face-lift?

Remove the ‘Jo’ and you get Anna (good link eh?). Anna Ford is one of my role models. In the late 70s Anna was the first female newsreader on ITV. BBC already had Angela Ripon, but that was it. When she started her TV career she wasn’t taken seriously because she was good looking and female. Now they don’t want her because she has a few wrinkles and won’t have a facelift or be made up to look glamorous. I think she is dignified, principled and gorgeous too.

Actually, Joanna’s OK as well - I loved her in the Avengers and Abfab - but ‘Vaseline’…. Do I look like I was born yesterday? Erm - NO!
KAZ