Let's start with bad manners. And too much television. And computers. Yes, definitely computers. And church services that aren't the same as they used to be. And meat. And Glencoe. For someone so likeable, Joanna Lumley's list of

dislikes is a surprisingly long and snakey one.

It's not that the actress is irritable or some kind of Grumpy Old Woman (less of the old, thank you). It's just that, like many other people in their late 50s, she has watched the modern world metamorphose as her standards have stood still, like a wobbly video freeze-frame.

In fact, there is a lot about Joanna Lumley that is modern and comfortable in September 2004. Like her belief in the legalisation of drugs. Or her distaste for President Bush. Or her concern for the environment (and her desire to invent things to protect it). The two Joanna Lumleys (past and present) co-exist perfectly.

That mix is easy to understand when you look at the Lumley CV. There it is in the text: tradition and modernity side-by-side. The child of a British officer raised in Kashmir who grew up to be a model and a single mother. An animal rights campaigner and environmentalist who sent her son to boarding school. A private person who makes her living being a public figure.

All this means it is not easy to pin Lumley down, even after reading her memoirs, No Room for Secrets. With a title coquettishly suggesting confession (but not delivering it), the book is still a pretty unique set of remembrances. Rather than a chronological trawl through her life, it unlocks the front door of her London home and takes the readers through each room, with memories being called up by a piece of furniture, a trinket or a photograph.

It is just the kind of house in which to try such an experiment because it's crammed with the jetsam that sticks to us as we live. There are books in leaning towers, every wall or mantelpiece is covered with paintings or pictures of her family, including her granddaughter Alice, and every drawer is open with its contents making a bid for freedom. At the back of the house, there is a den where her husband, the composer Stephen Barlow, can throw open the lid of his piano and play loudly and no-one can hear a thing.

In person, Lumley is a little like the house: bohemian, slightly disorganised but good-looking. She is tall and thin, like a very glamorous exclamation mark, and today is wearing a tiny pair of designer jeans and a cardigan that a butterfly brooch has just landed on. The hair is in that familiar flowing style that must surely be copyrighted to Joanna Lumley Inc by now. As we chat, that list of likes and dislikes grows. It's not in a grumpy or judgmental way, but nonetheless it gradually reveals a little bit more about Joanna Lumley, Person rather than Joanna Lumley, Actress.

How about we take the likes first? Like solitude. Lumley has never been afraid of it, which may stem from the fact she was sent to boarding school from the age of eight. She talks about the ache of leaving her parents, but eventually it was a positive experience for her. ''The ache and dread was the parting,'' she says. ''The dread of going back to school. It's the same with my husband, even though we are both grown up. He often has to go away. You take him to the airport and you go . . .'' She scrunches up her face, showing the pain. ''But once they've gone and you get back on with your life again, it's gone.'' Lumley put this belief into practice when she sent her own child, Jamie, to boarding school (there was a practical reason too, in that she was a

single mother and was beginning a career as a model). ''I think as children we grow and we sometimes have to be away from people who know us to grow. Solitude is not to be feared.''

That view was put to a dramatic, public test for Lumley when she spent nine days alone on a tropical island for the BBC documentary Girl Friday. It very nearly drove her mad. On her return to the mainland, she looked in a mirror and felt her reality crack. As her eyes met their reflection, she suddenly didn't know who she was. There in the mirror was the Joanna Lumley that was in The Avengers and Absolutely Fabulous, but for the real Joanna Lumley, that meant nothing. ''It was rather like having a doppelganger, you thought: 'holy smoke'. It was only nine days

so then you think more about people who've been in Guantanamo or wherever . . . It was the strangest thing. I mean, it was nearly madness.'' Within seconds, the feeling had melted and the real and the unreal had joined each other again. Joanna had herself back.

So what about some of the dislikes? Like Glencoe, for instance. And parts of Dumfriesshire, for that matter. Lumley is three-quarter Scots (she married Barlow in Fort William 18 years ago and has a cottage in Dumfriesshire) but her relationship with the country is complicated by her strong belief in otherness, or ghosts, or whatever you want to call it. She believes in her own psychic abilities and that ghosts have often reached out to her from beyond the barrier of death. ''I've often thought I'm haunted,'' she says, her voice suddenly still. ''I've often thought that.''

She tells me one story about a ghost who told her to leave her house and about how that sensitivity has led her to love and hate places. One of the worst was when she was on holiday in Italy. It was a day where the sun makes everything look good, but suddenly, she was hit with the hammer of dread. ''I felt the most terrible sinking sense of fear and melancholy. I was extremely happy and on holiday but discovered the place was a battlefield between the Siennese and the Florentines. The blood ran thick into the mud 400 years ago, but something of it resonated.''

This sensitively, this hauntedness, has affected her in Scotland, too. She has sensed it and heard it in Glencoe as strongly as she has sensed the weather or the voice of a friend. ''I don't find Glencoe a very cheerful place to go.'' In Dumfriesshire too, she says she can feel the bloody deaths of the Covenanters. ''You get a strange streak of melancholy. I know where the Covenanters were hanged, and I know where they killed them and you can feel some mournful resonance. It's not more than that; it's not haunted every day. The world can't be haunted by 88 billion people who've all lived, but sometimes old, unsettled scores remain.''

We move on to some other Lumley likes, such as Patsy, the character she has played in Absolutely Fabulous for 13 years. Patsy is, like almost every great comedy character you can think of, a monster. Like some manicured TRex, she tortures everyone around her, even those who might possibly care about her. The role gave Lumley's career a new profile in the 1990s and she has grown to love every hateful part of the character. One of the reasons for the success was Jennifer Saunders's zeitgeist-imbued script, but Lumley thinks that's only part of story. ''Why did it work with truck drivers in Ohio? What did they know about Harvey Nicks? It was because although the characters were extreme, there was a truly human element.''

Lumley's Bafta for the role was important to her, not because of the award itself but rather because it meant she was no longer on the outside. She says she always felt like an actress, even though she also felt like she didn't look or sound like one. And now others were saying ''you are an actress, and a good one as well''. ''I always felt as though I was an outsider,'' she says. ''Someone who

didn't deserve to do well.'' Now the outsider was inside at last.

Suddenly, the list of likes seems longer than the hates. Certainly, she is loving where her career is flowing. There is a new Miss Marple for ITV later in the year (with Geraldine McEwan as the doddery detective); an Ab Fab Christmas special; another new series she can't talk about yet; and perhaps another book, maybe a novel. ''I want to submit it without my name because that is the only way I'd know whether it was any good. If it's a novel, I want to make sure people buy it because it's good.''

Apart from all that, there is a little musing to be done about how to change the world. She has some

borderline-wacky ideas of her own - electricity created by the energy of cars on the motorways is one of them - but no time to work them out.

Perhaps one day she will.

No Room For Secrets is published by Penguin at (pounds) 17.99. Joanna Lumley will be appearing at the Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow on Tuesday, October 5. For tickets, call 0141 353 8000.