Dame Joanna Lumley had to stop Jennifer Saunders from killing off their Ab Fab characters

Dame Joanna Lumley had to stop Jennifer Saunders from killing off their 'Absolutely Fabulous' characters.

The 78-year-old actress starred as boozy fashion editor Patsy Stone in the classic BBC sitcom alongside writer Jennifer - who played hapless PR guru Edina Monsoon - and had to put her foot down when her co-star suggested "destroying" their alter-egos.

She told My Weekly: "I utterly adore Patsy and the thing is, she can’t be destroyed. I hope I’m not saying anything out of turn, but Jennifer said at one time, ‘Shall we just kill them off and bury them?'

"I wrote back the fastest email return I’ve ever written. I said, No, we’ve promised the world we will never die! And to be honest if all that vodka and champagne they’ve necked over the years hasn’t done the job, then why on earth would their creator be able to do it?”

The travel documentary presenter also recalled some of her moments from the series - which ran sporadically from 1992 until 2012 and officially ended with a 2016 film - and remembered being spotted by surprised members of the public when they filmed on location.

She said: "I loved it when we saw them as very old people in one episode. We had all kinds of prosthetics made to make us look really old. Scraggly necks and bald caps under very thinning hair, awful hands, badly fitting false teeth, little humps on our backs and our bosoms looked like empty sandbags!

"We could hardly walk because we were laughing so much. We went out on location dressed like that.

"We drove there in a bus with the crew and the make-up people. Jennifer and I were sat near the front and I was by the window. We stopped at a traffic light and an open-topped car pulled up next to us.

"I grinned at the man who was driving and I heard him say to the woman who was sitting next to him, ‘Oh look, it’s Joanna Lumley!’ It was so funny."