Okay, time to celebrate that most glorious of things: Patsy Stone. From the world of Absolutely Fabulous, she’s a belligerent and cantankerous individual steeped in alcohol and smashing put-downs. Hurray!

Patsy Stone

Portrayed by the one and only Joanna Lumley, Stone is an ageing hellraiser with an iron liver and relentless capacity for cigarettes.

A former model, she’s ageing disgracefully and paranoid by the loss of her youth. She goes to great lengths to hide her age and appear attractive, despite leading a lifestyle that’s only ever going to make her age faster.

All of which is misplaced, as she’s an attractive and elegant looking lady. But through relevations about her early life, it’s apparent her childhood was bleak and she seems to lack love in her life.

Her reaction to this is to drink very heavily and to be as outrageous as possible with her best friend Eddie Monsoon (Jennifer Saunders).

Meanwhile, she views youthful women as a threat and appears to be manically jealous of them.

A lot of her causticity is aimed at Moonson’s daughter Saffy (Julia Sawalha), who’s sensible and scholarly. She even hides her good looks.

Her shy behaviour pisses Stone off mightily and the two spend the vast majority of their time hurling insults back and forth.

And those bitter outburts – the one-liners – are really what make Stone a total delight. There’s a violent (and vile) wit in that booze soaked brain of hers.

Patsy quite naturally became much loved in the drag queen community and is now a bona fide legend.

Lumley is now an OBE and starred in an excellent documentary series of Japan a few years back. She’s also a raging activist, which is glorious, championing the rights of Gurkha immigrants.

Ab Fab the Film, Darling

Let’s not forget there was a film adaptation in 2016, which is where the current Absolutely Fabulous series stops.

It’s a pretty good film, although it’s Patsy Stone who (naturally, darling) drives the whole thing along with her manic behaviour.

It wouldn’t surprise us at all if another film or series crops up at some point. Why not? There’s still life left in the characters now.

Watching the first series from 1993, we were surprised the fashionista Eddie Monsoon is mobile phone obsessed and ranting about environmentalism and sushi.

Erm… has much changed since? That sounds like 2019 to us. And in this age of narcissism, Eddie and Patsy are glorious figureheads. Rather!