Actor Peter Sallis’s one-man show charts a career acting with the greats of stage, screen and Plasticine, says Peter Elson

“Orson never stopped talking and he wanted a listener.

“I’ve seen him sit down to lunch with a large round table covered in plates of food and not a square inch showing.

“He just shovelled this stuff down. The guy was insatiable, but he was almost a genius.

“Nothing like Citizen Kane was seen in cinema before and I think his ideas scared the money men.

“They didn’t see eye to eye. Once we were rehearsing and the whole cast knew we were running out of money.

“The backer was a someone called Margolis, a food magnate.

“As the cash crisis worsened, I heard Orson on the phone yelling, ‘For Christ’s sake, Margolis, sell another milk bar’!”

As a director, Welles fermented with too many ideas, he thinks.

“Luckily, Laurence Olivier was his match. They were both at the top their game with a huge mutual respect,” says Peter.

“Orson kept changing his mind and Olivier took him aside and told him to take a week off so we could learn his initial notes. It worked and the play was a success because of that.”

Peter acted in Taste the Blood of Dracula, with Christopher Lee.

“You can’t be in a Hammer Horror Film without it being fun,” he chuckles.

“It’s ‘mock horror’, with heads rolling and blood spurting, you’re bound to have a few laughs.

“That said, these films were not easy to make and Hammer knew what they were doing.

“Christopher Lee has a good sense of humour, but took the job seriously and was marvellous as Dracula.”

A BBC stalwart, Peter’s first notable television role was as Samuel Pepys in 1958 and was also in an early Doctor Who.

But his big “telly lottery” win came with being cast in a one-off pilot for Comedy Playhouse, entitled Last of the Summer Wine.

He is now the longest-serving actor in the series, written by Roy Clarke, starting in 1973 and with 288 episodes now filmed.

“Back then, the BBC had the sensible plan of showing pilots to see what would make a series,” says Peter.

“I’d done Roy Clarke’s first two plays, in one playing a homosexual transvestite. So natural casting there.

“I’ve always felt it was like Wind in the Willows, with three characters metaphorically messing about in boats.

“I told Roy Clarke and he said it had never occurred to him, but I’ve never lost that thought.

“Some things you know will just work. I did an episode of Kingdom with Stephen Fry. The unit hums with a good feeling.” The Wind in the Willows has a link to Wallace and Gromit, as Peter voiced Ratty in a BBC animated version which led to his most famous animation work.

“It was 1983 and the phone went, the caller said ‘I am Nick Park and I want you to do the voice of a cartoon character’.

“I wanted to audition with a script and he said no need. But I got the script and liked it.

“I’ve no idea how he came to pick on me, I suppose it was Summer Wine.

“I knew how I’d do it, but never would have thought we would end up at the Oscars.”

It took six years for the first fim, A Grand Day Out, to be made. He wryly admits that his work as Wallace has “raised his standing a few notches in the public eye”.

AN AUDIENCE With Peter Sallis, at Prescot Methodist Hall, Atherton Street, off High Street, Prescot, at 7.30pm, Tuesday, June 23; tel: 07835 090 752.

peter.elson