Joanna Lumley jokes that smoking has helped her stay fit at 77

Dame Joanna Lumley has joked about the way in which she keeps fit at age 77, saying at an event for her new short film My Week With Maisy that she thanks her health to smoking.

Speaking at an event at Notting Hill’s Electric Cinema, the Absolutely Fabulous actor joked about how her habit of smoking was actually a help not a hindrance.

Per The Daily Mirror, Lumley shared: “I am unbelievably fit. Despite, or probably because of smoking. I am never ill. I never have these extraordinary emergency procedures.”

Lumley is said to smoke between one to 40 cigarettes a day, and it is a habit that she does not plan to quit anytime soon because she "loves" it.

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The actor is best known for playing the character of Patsy Stone in Absolutely Fabulous, a magazine fashion director who is often seen chain-smoking in scenes.

But while Lumley joked about her smoking habit when discussing her film, in the past she has attributed her good health to a wholly different decision: Becoming vegetarian.

During an appearance on Table Manners With Jessie and Lennie Ware in March 2022, Lumley reflected on her decision to ditch meat over four decades earlier.

She said: “I suddenly thought I am not going to do this anymore. I am not going to eat meat or fish. No more finished. Gone.

“But I am not a vegan. That is the next step, but I love cheese.”

In 2021, Lumley also said of her dietary choices: “I’ve been a vegetarian for more than 40 years and I’m never ill.

“The diet I love best is: eat stuff, mostly vegetables, not too much. And exercise? I have a tall thin house and I run up and down the stairs a lot!”

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Lumley has also previously spoken with the Vegetarian Society about what made her go vegetarian, and she revealed it was a meal she was having in the '60s that finally made her quit meat for good.

She explained: "I was half way through eating a steak in the late sixties and I suddenly saw it as flesh, like my arm… and that was it."

Watch: Joanna Lumley still sends love letters to her husband.