Joanna Lumley was in a bar in Sheffield when she saw a weapon fall to the floor from a man's bag. She confronted the gunman, Phillip Cottam, and talked to him while armed police, alerted by other drinkers, rushed to the scene.

Andrew Lindsay, Cottam's solicitor, told Sheffield Magistrates Court last week: "Miss Lumley perhaps retained many of the qualities one would have expected her to hold from being in The New Avengers."

The actress, who later won acclaim as Patsy Stone in the television sitcom Absolutely Fabulous, was appearing in The Cherry Orchard at Sheffield's Crucible Theatre in March, when the incident took place in the nearby Ruskin's Bar.

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