(Joanna Lumley talking about Patsy)
Patsy is the character of
Joanna Lumley in
Absolutely Fabulous. She is a magazine editor yet we only ever see her in her office once or twice across the whole 3 seasons! When she is seen working, she often seems confused and out of touch with what the readers want. She has an excellent sense of fashion but sadly wears far too much make-up and therefore often scares small children.
Like her friend Edina Monsoon she is a notorious alcoholic, even more so. We hear that she tried giving up drinking and it was the "worst three hours of my life". In one episode she is shown living in an appartment above an Oddbins (a kind of off-licence). She also smokes. Well, constantly would be a more accurate description. Such is her problem with smoking that in one episode she burns down Eddy's house by going to sleep on a wooden table with a cigarette lit in her mouth. She also takes drugs but like Edina is not nearly as clever as she thinks, being given chalk-dust instead of cocaine. She takes it to enjoy a game of table-tennis but is horrified to discover that she enjoyed it on chalk. She despises Saffron as Saffy sees too clearly the bad influence Patsy has on her mother.
Patsy was more good-looking popular than Edina when they were both young, though now both are social misfits in way and hardly in great shape. She went through a sex change to become a man before the series started, though as she said "it didn't pan out". Saffron Monsoon has recurring nightmares about Patsy's stint as a man. It would certainly be enough to creep anyone out!