Joanna Lumley has said wolf-whistling is a compliment and that people get “offended by everything” these days.

The Ab Fab star, 70, insisted that women should not get all hot and bothered about being whistled at, saying people have become “sensitive flowers” in this day and age.

She told the Daily Mirror: “How can wolf-whistling be offensive to women? It’s a compliment.”

“They’re saying ‘Cor you look all right, darlin’. What’s wrong with that?”

Joanna, who started her career as a model, said people used to have thicker skin.

“We were tougher in those days. You knew someone would whistle in the street and you weren’t insulted,” she said.

“We have become more sensitive flowers nowadays, people are very offended by everything.”

The star said in her modelling days photographers could be much ruder.

“They’d say ‘You look frightful, what’s the matter with you?’ ‘You look podgy, you look fat as a pig’.

“It was good-natured banter, you kind of got on with it, it didn’t upset you,” she said.