"Would you have said no? Spend nine days on a desert island somewhere in the Indian Ocean, exist with a bare minimum of kit, spend much of your time alone, sleep rough, make do, get on with it?"
Many people, most people would baulk at such a challenge. For Joanna Lumley, however, it proved to be an irresistible opportunity. And so, after just one day's survival training with the Irish Guards, she found herself on the proverbial desert island, off Madagascar, left to fend for herself. Girl Friday, the incredible BBC TV Film, is the amazing result of her experiences there. The change of lifestyle could not have been more radical but Joanna adapted with gritty style, building her "A" frame bed, finding fresh water and food and learning to cook on an open fire, while at the same time staving off the intense heat and a myriad of blood-sucking insects.
However, Joanna's story is more than just an account of physical survival. It's a journey of discovery revealing an unknown side to one of Britain's most popular celebrities both to her many admirers and also to Joanna herself. For it is an intimate record of how it feels to live in total solitude. An account of the excitement and the joys, the dislocation and even the insanity of real life in paradise.
