Simply Simon

"Sorry about the hounds,” Simon Callow apologises as his dogs bark continuously in the background, “but they get so excited.”

Not nearly as excited as their owner rhapsodising about his new one-man show Shakespeare: The Man From Stratford, main pictures.

But then that’s what we’ve come to expect of Simon Callow – the funeral in Four Weddings, top left, he of ‘duck a la banane’ fame and Mr Beebe in Room With View, below, a charming but utterly eccentric Englishmen who plays himself to great effect.

But according to Mr Callow, nothing could be further from the truth.

“I always play flamboyant characters but my own character is not like that. I live a fantastically sober existence,” he says dramatically. “But I’m not a hedonist. Besides you couldn’t be an actor if you weren’t disciplined.

“You have to be primed to be on time and able to perform for two to three hours every night, now that’s disciplined. You couldn’t do it if you were drunk every night.”

But acting aside, what really floats Simon’s boat is writing.

He’s got 13 books under his belt, an autobiography out any time now and the third part of his Orson Welles trilogy due soon.

And all this from the man who walked out of his degree at Belfast University to pursue a career in acting.

“But I had to ,” he interrupts. ”I was given a part in The Seagull by Chekhov at the Bristol Old Vic and I had to go and learn how to be an actor before they realised how awful I was, so I enrolled at drama school in Chalk Farm.

“And yes, it is ironic that I’m returning to academia more and more without planning to ever be a part of it. But the writing is the easy bit, it’s the research and analysis that takes the time.”

Books and Shakespeare actually are what make Simon tick, so playing the bard himself in a one-man show is a dream come true for a man who fell in love with Shakespeare at the age of six.

“There’s something particularly exciting to me about standing up on stage and telling people stories, something primitive. That wonderful relationship you get with the audience; I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s religious, but not far off, and it has gone on since the dawn of time ,” he says, in that growling drawl of his.

But isn’t that rather precocious behaviour for a six-year-old when everyone else is out playing cops and robbers?

“Well, I went to a school where my mother was secretary and my education was thrown in as part of the salary.”

Not your run of the mill education then, which would explain a lot.

“The school was called Elmcroft and was a peculiar institution on Goring-On-Thames in Berkshire. It was unusual when you come to think of it because it was full of Spaniards who used it as a finishing school before they went to Oxford or Cambridge, so I learned Spanish as well because all the conversation at mealtimes was in Spanish.”

But it didn’t end there. Next up was Simon’s grandmother’s complete works of Shakespeare’s in three volumes.

“I would read them aloud,” Simon continues. “I got off on that.”

Simon’s first book Being An Actor came out in 1984 and he has been writing ever since.

“I’m incredibly lucky and I’m sure I got commissioned to write the first book because I was a known actor, but I doubt they would have asked for a second if the first hadn’t been any good, and it’s still in print 26 years later,” he says proudly.

In fact his most recent volume is a lifetime in the making.

“My Life In Pieces is 30 years worth or work. It’s an autobiography interspersed from pieces I’ve written from university to just last week.”

So how does he manage to write and act all at the same time, two very different disciplines?

“Our brains are so infinitely capable of so much more than we ask of them,” Simon explains. “And writing is particularly suited to being on movies. I wrote a great deal when dressed in a kilt with a cheroot in my hand on Four Weddings, or in a wig and moustache for Phantom Of The Opera.”

As for Shakespeare: The Man from Stratford, Simon hopes people will come to see the bard not him.

“Maybe the movie stardom helps because people have seen me in successful films but that doesn’t translate to the box office.

“But on stage something happens, a spell is cast, a bewitchment, a bit of hocus pocus. I want people to think they have met William Shakespeare when they leave.”

But what about taking a breather from it all?

“I still hold on to my mother’s parable of the talents – she was strictly catholic – that if you have one you are obliged to make the best of it because other people haven’t had the same luck.

“But personally I like walking the dogs on Hampstead Heath. And when I’m writing and I need to get out of London I’ll head down to Oxford. I spend quite a lot of time writing in the Randolph actually.

“It’s something about the history resonating from the colleges and running through the city. I love it there and of course professionally I’ve been in both Morse and Lewis. I love Oxford. I’m raring to go. It’s very exciting.”

* Shakespeare: The Man from Stratford is at Oxford Playhouse on Monday and Tuesday. Call the box office on 01865 305305 or see oxfordplayhouse.com