Dame Joanna Lumley reveals how she will celebrate 40th wedding anniversary

Dame Joanna Lumley has revealed how she will celebrate her 40th wedding anniversary later this year as she prepares to mark four decades of marriage with her husband Stephen Barlow.

Dame Joanna Lumley is planning a “dream” holiday for her 40th wedding anniversary later this year.

The Absolutely Fabulous star – who turned 80 in May – will mark another major milestone in October when she celebrates four decades of marriage with her second husband Stephen Barlow, who she wed in 1986.

Joanna is heading out to Argentina to film a three-part travel documentary for UK channel ITV and she’s now revealed the 71-year-old conductor will fly out to join her so they can enjoy a holiday together after she wraps the shoot. When asked how she will celebrate her 40th wedding anniversary, she told Hello! magazine: “With any luck, he’s going to be able to join me at the end of our shoot in Argentina and we’ll spend some time in Buenos Aires.

“The only place I’d never visited was South America, so to go to Argentina and do a three-episode programme was a dream come true.”

Joanna went on to insist neither she or her husband have plans to retire any time soon.

She said: “We just keep on going, but probably, gradually, dust will settle on our heads and people will stop using us. I play very good ancient grannies, vicious, ghastly mothers and sorrowed aunts.”

It comes after Joanna insisted she doesn’t want a memorial service held in her honour after she dies while she also insisted people have needlessly become scared of death and it should instead be welcomed as a “friend” because it’s the “one surety about life”.

During an interview with My Weekly magazine, she said: “In the old days it [death] was so familiar to us because people loved in houses where, horrifyingly, children died, grannies died, people died. Death was ever present.

“All around. And now it’s something that only happens behind closed doors or in the distant rooms and is always considered a great failure.

“I think we have become unrealistic about it and so we dress it up. There’s nothing odd about dying. Everyone alive will die. That’s one surety about life. We should make it our friend. We just don’t want it to become a friend too soon, or for it to come with pair or for the wrong reasons.”