Great review
Melting hearts amid snow and ice
DAVID BELCHER
The Herald
Celebrity travelogues: you wait ages for one, then two turn up together. Fulfilling a girlhood ambition to see the aurora borealis, Joanna Lumley braved Norway's wintry minus-26-degree Arctic chill wrapped in eight layers of clobber, plus face-obscuring hats, but still entranced every man she met.
Her relentless flirting was hot yet subtle, thereby charming blokes' metaphorical pants off. After this programme, Norwegian tourism will doubtless increase by 12000%. Demand for excursions round Joanna Lumley may never be sated, however.
In the land of the Northern Lights, the ageless grandmother dazzled native reindeer-herders, fish-dryers and husky-drivers with her forthright 1000-megawatt grin, tumbling golden mane and saucer-sized eyes' inviting pools. If none of that incited instant drooling, Joanna inquired coquettishly as to whether a chap was a Viking or a bachelor. Gulp. Perspire.
Sailing further northwards from a snowy town in the Lofoten Islands aboard a boat skippered by a bloodless-looking local called Otha, Joanna the bold explorer allowed herself a delicious shudder of anticipation. "Otha whisks me away into a world of romance!" she breathlessly oozed. This prompted an impulsive hug from Otha, a fellow not readily given to such sudden embraces, I'd wager. Resistance to Joanna Lumley: it's futile.
Oiling about the tundra with her Lumley Patent All-Blokes' Heart-Melter turned up to 11, Joanna gasped seductively, clad in assorted elfin hats and declaiming eccentric observations in a throbbing post-coital purr. "I used to yearn to be cold," she huskily confided of her childhood in Malaysia's steamy heat. "Putting on a cardigan was a huge treat." And so Joanna Lumley succeeded in making the act of adding extra clothes seem sexy and alluring.
Removing her clothing before night-time slumbers in a hotel made entirely of ice was a different matter. She staged a curious self-deprecating striptease shimmy with the camera. She implored us to avert our eyes. We couldn't. She carried on disrobing. Decency prevailed by the narrowest of margins. Phew.
What was learned during Joanna Lumley in the Land of the Northern Lights? Personally, I learned that A is the last letter of the Norwegian alphabet. We all learned that Joanna Lumley is as swoonsome as she used to be all those years ago as Purdey in The New Avengers.
Joanna Lumley learned that the aurora borealis is a rapturous green phenomenon caused by Earth's magnetic field attracting multiple curtains of electrically charged particles. She lay down on her back in a snowy field somewhere near Tromso to see it, gasping: "This is the wonder of the world!" Ditto Joanna Lumley.
Source:
The Herald
