Ove the years, I have reviewed the performances of hundreds of the top names in classical music. So, it was a nice change to review a top name in the theatrical side if things – and you don’t get many topping Sir Derek Jacobi. Normally, I find encores from performing musicians superfluous, but if Sir Derek had tagged on another half hour to his Perth Theatre appearance on Friday night, I wouldn’t have batted an eyelid. It was an incisive and captivating insight to an icon of stage and screen.

He's an unassuming and engaging raconteur, self-deprecating too, and while most people are familiar with his career in the past 40 or 50 years, his conversation with Richard Clifford shone light on his early days in the “business”. There were names dropped right, left and centre but not in a boastful way. Anyway, if you worked with legends like Maggie Smith, David Frost, Peter O’Tool and the like, you wouldn’t keep it to yourself, would you?! There were touches of relaxed humour too, feeding off Richard’s smooth and astute prompting.

Some surprising facts emerged as the evening wore on. Rave reviews as a boy for a performance of Hamlet in the Edinburgh Festival, being third choice behind Charlton Heston and Ronnie Barker for the title role in I Claudius – that’s where I first came across this marvellous actor – and his debut in the National Theatre, with a mentor none other than the great Laurence Olivier. He also revealed that he doesn’t do accents, although a burst of broad Scots and cockney proved that he can!

Richard Clifford ran through his amazing Shakespearean career – has there been a better exponent of the bard’s works? – and one of the highlights of the evening for me was his reading of some stanzas from As You Like It. In the Q and A that ended the evening, he revealed the part he would have liked to play but never got the chance – Romeo.  Fair to say that it would have been a winning performance had he added that role to the hundreds already portrayed.

Actors, or indeed anyone, with the genial personality of Sir Derek soon have audiences in the palm of their hands, and there’s no doubt that those on Friday night were captivated, lapping up every detail of a life on stage and screen few could emulate.

It was another undoubted success for the Perth Festival organisers and those who missed this grand evening missed out. Big time!

Garry Fraser