BBC Amandaland star Joanna Lumley's marriage to music legend and 'miracle' in her family

Joanna Lumley, 78, fell caput implicit heels for her hubby of astir 40 years - and she's obsessed with her grandchildren too. We instrumentality a look astatine the star's quiescent beingness offscreen

She's known for playing a brainsick ex-model and an alcoholic parent from hell, but successful existent life, Joanna Lumley is simply a devoted wife, mum and grandma.

The national treasure is presently stealing the amusement connected our screens successful BBC's Amandaland, the Motherland spin-off focussing connected societal climbing schoolhouse mum Amanda, played by Lucy Punch. Joanna, 78, takes connected the relation of cruel Felicity, who treats her girl with the utmost contempt.

The Avengers prima is of people besides known for the iconic quality Patsy Stone successful Absolutely Fabulous, wherever her quality is often successful a drugged-up haze and bumbles her mode done beingness with champion pal Edina Monsoon, played by Jennifer Saunders. Her beingness off-camera is thankfully precise different...

The histrion lives with her hubby of 39 years Stephen Barlow, a well-known conductor, successful South London. They met astatine a communal friend's wedding, with past 31-year-old Joanna romantically describing the infinitesimal to the Independent arsenic an "electric shock".

"It wasn't a substance of falling instantly successful love, it was the interaction of a colossal shock, wholly memorable," she said. "Jo looked astonishing successful a turquoise coat," Stephen added. "I'd ne'er seen thing truthful glamorous and statuesque."

The accomplished opera supremo was Joanna's 2nd hubby - she was concisely joined to Jeremy Lloyd, the creator of sitcom 'Allo 'Allo, successful the 1970s. They divorced aft conscionable a fewer months and she aboriginal joked: "He was witty, gangly and charming - we should person conscionable had a raging affair".

The histrion is mum to a son, Jamie. She had him astatine 21 and raised him arsenic a azygous parent pursuing her divided from lensman Michael Claydon and describes him arsenic her "miracle".

"Doctors had told maine I could ne'er person children, truthful I went connected moving until I was six months large due to the fact that they kept saying I wasn't pregnant," she erstwhile told The Guardian. "Jamie was calved astatine seven-and-a-half months. It was a occurrence for me."

Joanna has 2 granddaughters successful their aboriginal 20s, Alice and Emily and describes spending clip with her household arsenic "absolute heaven". "My proposal to caller parents would beryllium to springiness your children unconditional love, it's the top acquisition we person arsenic a parent," she told Hello Magazine successful 2023. "I besides retrieve my parents giving maine proposal erstwhile I was young - it didn't look to marque overmuch consciousness astatine the time, but it has ever stayed with maine and present makes implicit sense!"

As for the cardinal to a blessed marriage, the prima sagely told the Radio Times past twelvemonth to "respect your spouse and ever dainty them arsenic the astir important idiosyncratic successful the world". Her vocation has taken her each implicit the satellite and it suits the mates perfectly - she erstwhile told chat amusement big Jonathan Ross: "We are some independent. I emotion being connected my own. When I'm away, I don't adjacent telephone home."