Hubie Davison (19) was so overcome by her charisma that he was "trembling" when she shook his hand. Theology student Georgie Soolsey (23), who wasn't even born when Joanna Lumley seduced a male generation as Purdy with her blonde pudding bowl haircut in the New Avengers, said: "She's so beautiful with such great bone structure it doesn't matter how old she is."
So how does a 60-year-old grandmother - who plans to "glide through the unimportant birthday" on May 1st next - manage to glow? She cuts and colours her own hair and her only beauty treatment is Astral - that stuff in the little blue jar that your great-grandmother used.
She actually rang Astral to say, "I only use Astral. I can't use anything else. Why don't you let me represent you?"
That sort of practical approach to making money as a single mother and occasional actress is the reason why "I'll never be a dame", Joanna Lumley told the Philosophical Society at Trinity College Dublin yesterday.
Dames are "serious actresses who appear in serious Shakespeare and 'crying' plays in the West End . . . you mustn't diversify."
A mostly female audience hung on every word as the twice-married vegetarian explained why she still smokes in moderation ("it's wrong to pretend that smoking is what's wrong with the world") and wears suede leather boots ("I tried plastic. It didn't work.")
Lumley has "worked flat out for 40 years" but has always assumed that the acting would dry up eventually. She was paid the equity rate of £350 per week for her acclaimed four-week stint in the Jonathan Miller-directed Cherry Orchard, which ended April 7th. So her main energies have gone into living life passionately and using her celebrity to bring attention to causes such as Sightsavers International, the Free Tibet campaign and animal welfare, as well as writing travel journalism and books.
Despite having low expectations of her earning power, her role as an alcoholic Lacroix-worshipping over-Botoxed Patsy in Absolutely Fabuloushas made Lumley "so rich I can scarcely walk!" Her goal now is to be an AbFab grandmother to Alice (4) and Emily (2), so she's turned to writing her first work of "soppy romance fiction" to be published by Penguin, who paid her very little for the book, she says.
Having never gone near university, she's a self-taught intellectual who has a regular correspondence with Diarmaid Ó Muirithe, writer of The Irish Timescolumn The Words We Use. ("Did I say his name right?") Turned down by the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art when she gave an appalling audition as Joan of Arc in a Queen Elizabeth accent 40 years ago, the former Bond girl believes that formal drama schools are "completely spurious" and advised her student audience that actors, writers and directors can't get work in an age of cheap reality TV.
When told that TCD had decided to axe its drama studies degree course, Lumley said that "universities are the places to study acting", and added: "The arts are taking a hammering everywhere. In England they have stripped £100 million from the arts to give to the Olympics. Why doesn't every participating country give money according to its means to build a permanent stadium - in Greece!" Lumley's tales of being a young model in London, dragging her own wigs, gloves, boots and make-up around on the Tube for 4 guineas a day drew laughs from her adoring young audience.
"I love them," she said afterwards. "I'm terribly flattered that they should know who I am."
