Dame Joanna Lumley jokes that smoking 40 cigarettes per day keeps her healthy at 77

dailyrecord.co.uk:

Dame Joanna Lumley has joked that smoking cigarettes may be the secret to her healthy life.The 77-year-old boasts that she's "unbelievable fit, despite, or probably because of smoking, reports the Mirror."I am never ill.

I never have these extraordinary emergency procedures.”The Absolutely Fabulous star plays a bigoted pensioner who undergoes chemotherapy for ovarian cancer in short film My Week With Maisy, and Joanna says becoming familiar with undergoing treatments in a hospital was a “humbling” experience.“I have never had to endure things like this,” she says of the treatments her character endures.“And so I felt very humble being introduced to cannulas and things like this and how long it would take and the bags and realising how movement is difficult...

like you can't really drag or go off, you know? It is was just humbling and interesting.”According to the star, she puffs between one and 40 cigarettes each day and has declared that she “loves” the habit and will never quit - in fact, during filming, she regularly snuck off for cheeky cigarette breaks, with director Mika Simmons finding her out in the streets of London’s Paddington, enjoying a smoke during rush hour.The pair spoke at a screening of the film in Notting Hill’s Electric Cinema, where Joanna discussed playing chain smoking fashionista Patsy Stone in Absolutely Fabulous, and said she reckons fans of the show know her character even better than she does.“People come up to me and say lines that come from Patsy and I don’t remember anything,” she laughs. Get the latest celebrity gossip and telly news sent straight to your inbox.