Dame Joanna celebrates gong with meal at Gurkha Restaurant
BY TOBY PORTER
toby@slpmedia.co.uk
Dame Joanna Lumley celebrated becoming a dame at a Gurkha restaurant – to honour the support she and they have given each other over the years.
The former Absolutely Fabulous actress, who was born in Kashmir and now lives in Kennington, cut a celebration cake on Thursday, January 13 and dined at Panas Gurkha Restaurant in Lee High Road, Lee.
Dame Joanna has a long affiliation with the Nepalese restaurant, having supported it on its journey to donate and deliver 100,000 meals to key workers last year.
She said: “The award came as a complete and unexpected surprise and is the kindest and most beautiful present imaginable. “It was lovely to celebrate with friends at a restaurant very close to my heart for all the work they have done in the local community.”
Owner of the restaurant, Sujan Katuwal, said it was a real honour to feed one of the country’s most beloved figures.
“Dame Joanna has helped us so much over the last 18 months and we were so happy she was recognised in the New Year’s Honours list.
It was so richly deserved. “We were even more excited to learn she would be celebrating with us and it was lovely to be able to make some of our special Nepalese food for her and her friends.”
Dame Joanna, who received an OBE in 1995, was recognised with the highest award for services to drama, entertainment and charity.
The former model and campaigner, 75, is best known for her role as the boozy Patsy Stone in Absolutely Fabulous.
The series originally ran between 1992 and 1996 but was revived from 2001 to 2004. Dame Joanna’s movie credits include a role in the 1969 Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
She also shared a kiss with Leonardo DiCaprio while starring in the Martin Scorsese crime drama The Wolf Of Wall Street and appeared in two Pink Panther films.
In 2016 she and her co-star Jennifer Saunders made Absolutely Fabulous The Movie, which included celebrity cameos from Kate Moss, among others.
The former model has two Baftas for her performance in Absolutely Fabulous.
Other recent television stints include a guest role in sitcom Motherland as well as ITV’s Finding Alice.
Her 2022 TV projects include Joanna Lumley’s Secret Cities, a three-part documentary series for ITV in which she visits Rome, Paris and Berlin.
Born 9,000 feet up in the Himalayas, where her father was an officer in the Gurkha Rifles, Dame Joanna was educated at a convent in East Sussex
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