Joanna Lumley's character in Absolutely Fabulous. Patsy is a daughter of an unknown father and a bohemian woman who cared nothing for her children (crying after Patsy's birth, "Take it away! And bring me another lover...") and was practically brought up by the mother of her friend Edina Monsoon, or "Eddie." She is actually somewhat older than Eddie, since Patsy's mother didn't think to send her to school for some years.

During their adolescence in the 1960s, Patsy was the pretty, popular one (Eddie: "Pats used to go out with Keith Moon." Patsy: "Well, sort of, I mean I woke up underneath him in a hotel bedroom once.") Patsy did at some point end up taking care of her elderly mother until her death, but doesn't really seem to have let that interfere with her drugging and drinking and fun. She eventually became fashion director at a magazine ("One snap of my fingers and I can raise hemlines so high the world's your gynecologist!") after sleeping with the publisher, but rarely actually goes to work.

She and Eddie spend most of their time just trying to be fashionable, drunk, stoned, and enjoying themselves, to the exclusion of everyone else; Patsy is even jealous enough when Edina acquires a boyfriend to try and break them up. Of course, she hates Edina's conservative daughter Saffron Monsoon, and the feeling is mutual; Saffron feels Patsy is a freeloader and bad influence. At some point Patsy went to the Betty Ford Clinic but after coming back to London clean, relapsed as soon as Edina offered her a drink. She can't stand the idea of growing old, insisting she's thirty-nine when a magazine interviews her as the lover of a member of Parliament when and says she's forty-seven.


(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!

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