Before Ab Fab’s Patsy Stone, there was Purdey.

Fans of Joanna Lumley will no doubt already know that her first major role was playing the high-kicking agent in The New Avengers. However, while many have credited the show with giving its Seventies audiences a female action hero that was very much ahead of her time, Lumley has admitted that things weren’t so forward-thinking behind the scenes.

Indeed, earlier this summer she revealed that she fought with the show’s producers when they tried to stop her cutting her hair.

“I said her [Purdey]’s hair will be cut short and they said, ‘No, you cannot do that because no heroine has ever had short hair’, which was true,” she said, whilst speaking at the Edinburgh TV Festival.

“I said if I cut it you will like it. They said if you cut it and we don’t like it you’ve got to pay for the wig.”

Lumley, of course, went ahead and got the haircut she wanted.

“I cut it and they liked it,” she said simply.

Joanna Lumley shares depressing true story behind this iconic New Avengers photo