JOANNA Lumley has crammed modelling, acting, activism, authorship and adventurous television presenting into her “random career”, but in all her 72 years, the well-travelled Joanna had never been to York.

Until Sunday that is, when La Lovely made her confession at the outset of It’s All About Me, one of those An Evening With evenings that was designed for just such a national treasure.

Enter Joanna in flowing white and silver-spangled pumps to guide Sunday’s full house through her back pages, with accompanying clips that came alive from the collage of images behind her. “I love you, I love you” she enthused, accompanied by a smile that she later recommended as the best way to greet life each new day.

We were given insights into her rejection at 16 from RADA; Swinging Sixties modelling for Jean Muir; early jobbing acting roles in Coronation Street as Ken Barlow’s lover, opposite Christopher Lee’s Dracula and as a brainwashed Bond Girl in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service; and recollections of a year when she earned only £60.

Not too much grim detail, mind you, for this was a show on a permanently upward trajectory, from Purdey’s bob and purloined stockings for the media launch for The New Avengers, to Patsy’s fallen-underwear old-age send-up in Absolutely Fabulous, via Joanna's resourceful use of a bra for shoes in her castaway survival show, Girl Friday, in 1994.

That was the first time she worked with BBC producer Clive Tulloh, who subsequently has overseen all her travel shows. And there was the drily witty Tulloh, by her side, Joanna by now in floaty green, to collate questions written by audience members for the second half’s more informal entertainment .

We learned that vivacious, amusing, beautifully theatrical Joanna prefers Moet to Bollinger, always looks forward to the next stage of her life, and if she had one wish for a better world, it would be to be kind to each other, darlings. Lovely thought, lovely show.