Brian Blessed

Devizes Festival

Corn Exchange June 11

WELL known for his sonorous voice and hearty, king-sized portrayals actor Brian Blessed play to an almost fully sold out Ceres Hall on Thursday night, a highlight of this year’s festival.

The 78-year-old’s career in television, film and stage has spanned six decades and has included a wide variety of performance from Shakespeare to musicals.

He is still remembered by many for his early role as PC Fancy Smith in the BBC series Z-Cars along with his involvement in Star Wars as CGI character Boss Nass.

The stories he told covered much of his life and I particularly enjoyed hearing about his adventurers as he is currently the oldest man in the world to get to 28,500ft without oxygen and to trek to the magnetic North Pole on foot.

The first half was a traditional stand up set with the second half devoted to a question and answer session.

Blessed very often went off on a tangent when asked a direct question but it was always worth it as the responses always tended to end with a funny story or anecdote which had the audience in stitches.

Between stories about I, Claudius and Z Cars, the room also heard that he is soon to become a cosmonaut, having completed 800 hours of space training in Russia, and is planning to climb Everest again when he is 80.

I really enjoyed his performance and I look forward to hearing what he gets up to next.