Joanna Lumley says some Ab Fab jokes would never make it to screen now

1 November 2021

'Absolutely Fabulous' would be "too offensive" to make now, according to Joanna Lumley.

Joanna Lumley and Jennifer Saunders

The 75-year-old actress played Patsy Stone in the iconic sitcom - which began in 1992 - famous for her chain-smoking, boozing and all-round callous demeanour, starring alongside Jennifer Saunders as eccentric PR guru Edina Monsoon.

Lumley believes that some of the more outrageous jokes would not get past the PC brigade in 2021.

She said: "Some of Edina's language and some of her attitudes to things ... I mean they were just scandalous. You couldn't get away with it!"

The former model accepts that society changes, attitudes evolve and therefore comedy has to evolve with those changes.

Speaking at the Henley Literature Festival, she added: "I know a lot of comics have felt that it's really making things difficult because you can't even joke about a mother-in-law anymore. So I don't think we could do it again."

Lumley's comments come after 'Ab Fab' writer-and-star Saunders previously opened up about her views on the future of comedy, which seemed to echo those of her former co-star as she slammed "woke" culture.

Saunders, 63, said: "This is a modern thing, isn’t it? If someone says something it always has to be, ‘Oh, but sorry, you can’t say that’. I say, ‘Oh f*** off’. It’s not a crime to have an opinion or say something. It is always petty and small-mindedness that p***es me off — bigotry and small-mindedness. I think it has changed comedy like what we used to make. I think we would probably talk ourselves out of most of it now. It would be like, ‘We won’t have a good answer so let’s not do that.' I think people do talk themselves out of stuff now because everything is sensitive.”