If there is a more delightfully British job title than Chief Cricket Officer, Joanna Lumley hasn’t heard it. ‘Can you imagine anything grander? Obsessed. I love it. Along with Dame, of course,’ she says, eyes sparkling with amusement over Zoom.
The title comes courtesy of a new partnership with Toyota, who are supporting cricket across the country as the Principal Partner of the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB). The aim is simple: get more people involved in the game – not just watching it, but picking up a bat and ball themselves – and Lumley is exactly the kind of evangelist the sport needs.
‘From age eight I’ve always played cricket,’ she tells me. ‘I started after coming back from the Far East and learnt how to bowl to my older cousins. It gets you moving, running, bowling, leaping and catching. That’s why I’m thrilled that Toyota are sponsoring little cricket clubs around the country so they can open their pitches to people who may have never tried it.’
Her enthusiasm for the game runs deep, and not only as a player. Lumley grew up watching cricket’s greats with reverence. ‘I would watch matches with the likes of Colin Cowdrey, and Alec and Eric Bedser, and all those giants,’ she says.
Cricket, in the Lumley household, is still an event. ‘I live with a passionate cricketer – my husband, composer Stephen Barlow, who is actually a musician,’ she says, laughing slightly at the contradiction. ‘But he absolutely adores cricket. So every year, when the great matches come on, we watch.’
For Lumley, the beauty of cricket lies in its inclusivity. ‘It's a game that you can play at every level, and you don't have to play the full Test match for five days, which the purists adore. You can have much shorter games – Twenty20, The Hundred, half-day cricket – and that’s what’s so brilliant about it.’
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That openness, she believes, is part of why cricket is ripe for a resurgence. ‘What Toyota have done quite brilliantly,’ she says, ‘is try to draw people in, to make the game feel open and welcoming, particularly for people who might never have thought of themselves as cricket players.’ The car manufacturer is offering 10,000 free places for children aged five to eight to participate in the England and Wales Cricket Board’s (ECB) All Stars Cricket programme for the 2025/2026 season.
Women’s sport, she notes, has seen extraordinary growth in recent years. ‘I went along to the Oval to watch the women’s cricket team and it was just fabulous. It wasn't that long ago that there was no question of women playing football, cricket or rugby – women were just not part of it – and look at it now. Women’s football and rugby are storming ahead and attracting huge crowds,’ she says. ‘Cricket is due its moment.’
Still in motion
Lumley is approaching 80 this year, although the phrase “approaching” seems to be doing most of the work in that sentence. Even over Zoom, her energy and enthusiasm are palpable. She speaks authoritatively, with that iconic smooth-as-velvet lilt, laughs easily and carries the buoyant optimism of someone who still finds the world endlessly interesting.
The secret, she says, is simply to keep moving.
‘I’m busy, busy, busy,’ she says. ‘I don’t have time for gyms.’ Does she ever worry about bone density or muscle loss with age? Questions I feel obliged to ask, given we are, after all, Women’s Health.
‘I tend to stay fit by doing things and eating well.’
A long-time vegetarian, she says this is the reason ‘I'm still firing on all cylinders,’ adding: ‘I believe we should all eat much more vegetables and much less meat.’
She continues: ‘It used to be frowned upon in Europe, but I’ve been lucky enough to travel to countries – for instance India – where millions of people are vegetarians.’
It was through travel that her relationship with food evolved. ‘That’s when you discover the joy of spices and respect for the food that you’re eating. You begin to love all the things that were just side dishes before.’
When it comes to movement – or simply ‘doing things’ – travel often plays a role. Over the past two decades Lumley has become one of television’s most beloved travel presenters, making documentary series everywhere from the Nile to the Silk Road, Japan, Greece and the Caribbean. In total she has filmed around 17 travel documentaries, turning her curiosity about the world into a second act on screen.
Travel, she says, has always been part of her life. ‘I was born in a suitcase, as it were,’ she says cheerfully. ‘I was born in Kashmir and then started travelling with my father’s regiment, the Gurkhas.’
Her childhood was spent moving across Asia – Hong Kong, Malaysia – experiences that gave her an early appreciation for different cultures and people. ‘Once you realise how similar we all are, it’s heartening.’
The wanderlust has never faded. Her new travel series, out this year, takes her to Argentina. ‘Their favourite game, apart from football, is polo. I might have to try to get them onto the cricket pitch as well,’ she says with a knowing look.
The actress, who was made a Dame in the Queen’s New Year Honours List in 2021 for her services to drama, entertainment and charity, continues to grace our screens well into her seventies. She recently joined the cast of Netflix’s Wednesday as Grandmama Addams and is also set to appear in the latest series of the comedy Amandaland.
Despite acting for more than half a century – and along the way playing a character named Purdey in The Avengers (a delightful coincidence given my own name) – Lumley still approaches every role with the seriousness of someone just starting out.
‘Every part I’ve played has challenged me in some way,’ she says. ‘I never think I can just cruise through it.’
Her process is meticulous. ‘I always start as though it’s the toughest job in the world and investigate every single part of the character. You must be a servant to the script and bring everything you can to it.’
It’s a discipline that informs how she approaches life as a whole. ‘Even humble things like sweeping a room or washing up. Do things properly, do things brilliantly and life becomes pretty nice.’
Of course, millions still associate her with Patsy Stone in Absolutely Fabulous, the permanently champagne-soaked fashion director whose outrageous behaviour made the show one of Britain’s defining comedies of the 1990s. The series has since found a new audience among younger viewers who regularly share clips and memes online.
‘It's thrilling that the young have come into this satire of the ’90s because it was so absurd and ghastly.’
The show’s longevity, she explains, comes down to Jennifer Saunders’ writing. ‘If something is well written and truly funny it tends to last, like the great classics Porridge and Dad’s Army.’
As for playing the impeccably coiffed, indestructible and perpetually outrageous Patsy Stone, Lumley remembers it fondly. ‘Patsy was brilliant to play, and the love between us all and for the script shone through. We did it live in front of an audience, so it was like doing a little play with only five days’ rehearsal. It was the best fun.’
Looking out
Recently, Lumley found herself unexpectedly going viral – in a moment that neatly summed up her philosophy: that resilience is built less through self-analysis and more through connection with the world around us.
A clip from a podcast interview, in which she gently questioned the modern obsession with self-discovery, racked up millions of views and quickly began circulating in my own WhatsApp group of thirty-something women.
In it, Lumley says thoughtfully: ‘I think there's too much exploration, we're all dull as ditchwater. I think if you've been born in yourself, you know yourself. So when they say, what did you discover about yourself on this short journey? You go nothing, because I was here all the time. So I don't understand that... I think if you keep on trying to discover who you are, again quite a short road.’
The comment struck a chord, particularly in a moment when wellness culture often emphasises self-reflection as a tool for optimisation.
‘I think what I meant,’ she clarifies now, ‘and I don’t mean that you shouldn’t understand yourself – but you will learn much more about yourself by looking out rather than looking in. Look for people that you can help, or things that you can be interested in or learn, and have gratitude in your heart.’
Constant self-comparison, she says, is corrosive. ‘If you’re always looking into yourself, and maybe measuring yourself against other people, always feeling that you’re not quite as good, or you’re better than, I’m not sure that’s really the healthiest way to go about things. Looking out and doing is better than sitting in and brooding.’
In a world that often feels anxious and divided, shaped by ongoing conflicts and environmental fears, Lumley’s optimism feels almost radical. But she insists it’s simply practical.
‘The world has seen lots of dreadful things and still we survive,’ she says. ‘The important thing is to know that you are going to do your best.’
Ordinary people, she believes, play an important role in keeping society steady – and sometimes that means simply choosing to be cheerful.
‘Quite often by pretending to be happy, pretending to be positive, you actually feel much better,’ she says.
Above all, she believes in hope. ‘When Pandora’s box was opened, the one thing left at the bottom was hope. That’s what we’ve all got — that little flame we must keep alight.’
Her rule for life is equally straightforward.
‘Think of who you would like as a best friend,’ she says. ‘Somebody who's always good natured, always trustworthy, wouldn't lie to you, is kind, is helpful, is good fun to be with, knows when to be quiet, is supportive and generous.’ Then, she adds, ‘make yourself into that person.’
Lumley insists she doesn’t feel time pressing in, even as she approaches a milestone birthday.
‘I don’t feel like my time is running out,’ she muses. ‘But we’ve all got a lifespan. I might live until I’m 120. I hope not. But I just don’t want to waste a minute of what’s left to me. I want to learn more, read more, meet more people and have time just for staring and thinking.’
She pauses.
‘The world is full of stuff happening all the time, thrilling and good stuff,’ she says. Then she smiles. ‘We’ve got to focus on that, because it’s very easy to be dragged off into darkness.’
And with that unmistakable Lumley flourish, she adds: ‘Life is fabulous.’
Joanna Lumley has been appointed by Toyota as Chief Cricket Officer to support Toyota’s role as Principal Partner of the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) with a shared aim to get more Brits involved in cricket by growing participation from grassroots level upwards.
Perdita Nouril is the Beauty Editor for Women’s Health UK. She has worked in the beauty industry for 15 years since graduating from the University of Nottingham. Adept at exploring the colossal world of beauty, she loves to scratch beneath the surface to debunk the myths, decode the science and challenge traditional notions of beauty. You can always find her preaching sermons on the power of a red lip, extolling the virtues of a decent serum and championing the very best female beauty founders.
You can find Perdita on Instagram on @perditanouril
