“Isn’t this beautiful?” he says, a sweep of his right arm taking in the 17th-century wooden theatre building perched on an island in the Thames. “Fifty quid for a meal and a show. Marvellous!” He’s been working all his life. At Nottingham Rep, he got £4 19s 6d a week to play a succession of roles and help with building sets. One day, there was a knock on the door that led to the street and there stood a tall, silver-haired woman in an elegant coat. She explained she was polishing her latest play and wondered whether she could look round the theatre. “I must have been about 21 at the time,” recalls Brian. “She was probably in her 60s. So I introduced myself. ‘What a lovely name,’ she said. I told her it was my real name. Then she said, ‘My name is Agatha Christie.’We got on straight away and became great chums. I played the role of favourite nephew. She was my favourite aunt.” In his latest Christie production, Towards Zero, adapted in 1956 from her eponymous book, he’s cast his wife, South African-born Hildegard Neil, and their daughter, Rosalind. “I don’t do favours for anyone but Hildegard has real style which is what her character demands,” he explains. “It’s hard to find an older woman with that quality and that clear diction. Judi Dench has it and so does Maggie Smith but it’s rare.”
What must it be like to be directed by your husband or father when he’s Brian Blessed? Perhaps surprisingly, Rosalind isn’t at all intimidated.
“We share a shorthand,” she says. “Dad doesn’t have a particularly confrontational directing style.”
And there’s an unexpected bonus: “There are large portions of the day when you get to speak and he has to be quiet.”
Hildegard agrees, adding: “He’s a kind, generous man. He’s never aggressive. He’s an actor himself so he knows it wouldn’t do to upset his cast. But he does take up quite a bit of oxygen in a room.”
The couple met when they were cast together in a TV thriller series.
“It’s an overworked phrase but I genuinely think Brian has become a bona fide national treasure.”
The man never stops. He’s done 800 hours space training in Russia. (More of this in a moment.) He’s climbed most of Mount Everest three times.
He was playing King Lear in Guildford a few years back and collapsed on stage. It wasn’t a heart attack, but a sort of murmur. Just 20 minutes later, he was on stage again. In the end, a sophisticated pacemaker was fitted and he had to pull out of the production.
“For me, acting is a must. But my biggest love in life is space,” says Brian. “Acting is holding a mirror up to life. At the end of the day, though, it’s pretending. Climbing Everest, by contrast, is life. And there’s a big difference. I have no time for actors who take their parts home with them. Nonsense! Leave it in the dressing room.”
He went to Russia for space training in preparation for making a film, he says, “to point the way to Mars”.
That involved total training. He spent hours in a centrifuge and in MiG jets. He claims: “I’m very fit. I can lift a 300lb bench press. I run five miles a day. I have enormous energy. I’m now qualified to go to the International Space Station.”
Mountaineering. Spacewalking. He’s trekked to the North Magnetic Pole on foot, the oldest man to do so. Where does all this come from? “Oh, easy. It’s a love of life.”
At York University, the Douglas Adams Society has designated him their Official Shoutperson. He rumbles with laughter. “The other week they measured my roar against a 747. The jet plane registered 118 decibels. I measured 127.”
He meditates twice a day but mention the concept of retirement and he looks at you as though you’ve suddenly lapsed into Norwegian.
“RETIREMENT?” he booms. “It would be a LIVING DEATH!” His birth certificate says he’s 82. How old is he in his head? “I’m ageless. Death does not exist. Life is the last word. And we’re all looked after by guardian angels.”
His has certainly been a charmed career. In 1962, the BBC launched Z-Cars in which Brian was cast as PC “Fancy” Smith.
Did it change his life? “Only totally. I’d left drama school. I’d done my stint at Nottingham and then Birmingham Rep. I was invited down to London to audition for what was described as a semi-documentary.
“That turned out to be Z-Cars, 40 minutes live and five minutes filmed. The first two episodes were shown. We were in the north somewhere, filming in some woods. I came back to London and everything had gone crazy. We were getting over 30 million viewers. I had five secretaries dealing with my mail.”
When William Hartnell announced he was going to retire as the first Doctor Who, the BBC felt they had his successor already on their books. “I’d done a couple of years as Fancy and that was enough. I can’t understand those people who play the same character for 50 or 60 years.
How can they call themselves actors?” First, the BBC offered him the role of Porthos in a TV adaptation of The Three Musketeers.” After that, they said, they wanted me to play the good Doctor. But I scared them. I said my vision of the role was to play him as Doctor Wu, with subtle oriental make-up, like Charlie Chan.
“They weren’t having it for one minute even though I was flavour of the month. So I played Porthos and then went on to other projects. They looked after me.”
He played Kevin Costner’s father in the film, Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves but the film that catapulted him to something like cult status was Flash Gordon.
“I was invited to Number 10 Downing Street. I was the guest of David Cameron. I stood on the Cabinet table and the first thing I said was, ‘Gordon’s Alive!’
“It became my catchphrase from Flash Gordon and it’s followed me round the world. I was 20 miles from the North Pole when a Russian submarine emerged from the ice.
The captain poked his head out, saw it was me and said: ‘Please say, Gordon’s Alive!’
“The more up-to-date equivalent, he says, is providing the voice of Grampy Rabbit in Peppa Pig. He’s just recorded five new episodes.
He’s also the face in a new series of government-funded advertisements urging people to gamble responsibly. “I play a giant,” says Brian, unsurprisingly.
Unfulfilled ambitions? “Got to get to the bottom of the sea,” he says.
Apparently, he’s a stranger to fear. Does he sleep well? “Like a flipping log” (except he doesn’t say ‘flipping’) “with my two Jack Russells either side of me”. He sounds happy. “HAPPY?” he roars. “I can’t wait for the day to start.”
Towards Zero runs at The Mill at Sonning, Berks, from August 8 to September 26. For details: millatsonning.com
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