Entertainment. Joanna Lumley

1.Gapped Script: Fill in the blanks with one word per space

Andrea: Hello, I’m Andrea Rose and you’re listening to bbclearningenglish.com. Today in Entertainment, we meet well-known British actress, Joanna Lumley, who is best known as Patsy in the television comedy series, Absolutely Fabulous. It’s also (1) __________ ____ Ab Fab – shortened forms of the words‘Absolutely’ – Ab and ‘Fabulous’ – Fab. Joanna Lumley also (2) ____________ had a flower named after her - a fuchsia. So from now on, people will have Joanna Lumleys growing in their gardens! Joanna started (3) ____________ career in the 1970’s. Her first acting role was as a Bond girl. Yes, she played one of the women in a James Bond film. Since then (4) ____________ ____________ in lots of films and television series and in 1995, Joanna was awarded an OBE. An OBE is an Order of the British Empire. It’s given by the Queen of England and is a very prestigious award that recognises people’s (5) ____________ to British society – be it as an actress or for charity work. But, Joanna didn’t always live in Britain. Have a listen to what she says about her childhood. Can you hear where she was born and grew up?

J. Lumley: I was born in India in Kashmir in Srinagar. And um, I was born the year before Partition so I don’t (6) ____________ _____, because I was born in ‘46 and by ‘47 all the British had to leave India. But, my father was with the Ghurkha regiment. Both my parents (7) ____________ ____________ ____________ _____ in India. So Britain was always called ‘home’ but we didn’t have a home here. And so after India we went out to Malaya and Malaya is really my first sense of where home was. I felt I was, I thought I was Malayan, I thought I (8) ____________ there.

Andrea: Did you manage to hear where Joanna was born? Yes, that’s correct, she was born in India. She talks about being born in ’46. What she means is 1946. Sometimes in English people (9) ____________ the year – for instance, the 1960s are often (10) ____________ ____________ _____ ‘the 60s,’ the 1970s – ‘the 70s’ and so on. Anyway, Joanna was born the year before Partition. That’s when India gained independence from Britain and Pakistan was created. Joanna’s father was in the military. Both Joanna’s mother and father had been brought up in India. If you are brought up somewhere, you’ve grown up there. Britain was always talked about as home but really, Joanna only felt at home when they (11) ____________ from India to Malaya, now known as Malaysia. That was her first sense, her first feeling of home. Let’s (12) ____________ ____ ____________ to that clip again.

J. Lumley: I was born in India in Kashmir in Srinagar. And um, I was born the year before Partition so I don’t (6)____________ _____, because I was born in ‘46 and by ‘47 all the British had to leave India. But, my father was with the Ghurkha regiment. Both my parents (7) ____________ ____________ ___________ _____ in India. So Britain was always called ‘home’ but we didn’t have a home here. And so after India we went out to Malaya and Malaya is really my first sense of where home was. I felt I was, I thought I was Malayan, I thought I (8) ____________ there.

Andrea: So Joanna spent her childhood (13) ____________ England. However, even as a young girl she knew she wanted to be an actress. She even (14) ____________ ______ RADA which is the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art here in London. It’s one of the best drama schools in the world. But unfortunately Joanna’s (15) ____________ didn’t go too well.

J. Lumley: When I was at school I (16) ____________ ______ RADA. I did (17) ____ ____________ ____________. So I just ran away from acting at that point. I just can't bear people saying ‘no’ or ‘you’re bad’. And eventually when I get to read critics who have written about performances I have done, if there are bad ones I (18) ________ ____________ _____ so that they don’t exist (19) _____ _____ ____________. Of course they do but in history I look back and it says ‘a glorious, lambent performance – gleaming, shining’ and you go, well just save that one’.

Andrea: Joanna uses lots of very (20) ____________ language in that clip. There are lots of adjectives. Her audition didn’t go very well – she says it was fearful, it was dreadful. She also talks about ripping up bad reviews of her (21) ____________ so that she only remembers the good ones.

Some of the words she’d like to hear describe her acting are – ‘glorious’, ‘lambent’ which means glowing, ‘gleaming’ and ‘shining’. They are all what we’d call superlatives – adjectives that describe something in (22) ______ ____________ ___ ____________. That’s the kind of actress Joanna Lumley hopes she’ll always be remembered (23) ______.

So let’s recap the language we’ve heard in the programme today.

Partition;

Regiment;

brought up;

my first sense;

fearful;

glorious;

lambent;

gleaming;

shining;

superlatives.

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Date: 2015-12-17; view: 901