PATSY STONE would no doubt be toasting the success of her alter-ego, Joanna Lumley, with a bottle of Bolly in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

The acclaimed actress is once again hitching up her hemline, backcombing her hair into oblivion to reprise her role as the jealous, sponging magazine editor addicted to sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll.

Three new episodes of Absolutely Fabulous will be shown at Christmas, New Year and just before the Olympics, to celebrate the show’s 20th anniversary.

The elegant actress, who looks much younger than her 65 years – and recently urged older women to go for the “mutton-dressed- as-lamb” look – says she couldn’t be happier to be reunited with original cast members Jennifer Saunders, Julia Sawalha, Jane Horrocks and June Whitfield.

“We hadn’t worked together for six years, so it was just uncanny. It was like we’d never been away,” she says.

They recently finished filming in London and are remaining tight-lipped about the plots. But, in her latest pictorial memoir, Absolutely, Lumley reveals she actually tried to get out of playing Patsy when the show was first piloted.

When she first met Saunders, she wasn’t sure what to make of her, and, at the first read-through, Lumley thought she’d blown it.

Lumley’s agent, however, persuaded the actress to stick with it.