Brian Blessed

Written by: Si Hawkins
Published: Tuesday 29th September 2020

One star of stage and screen, eight random questions; it's the ultimate test of famous person and fate.

Yes, this week it's a very special edition of Random 8, as we welcome the acclaimed classical actor, climber of mighty peaks and proud possessor of the greatest voice in Great Britain: Brian Blessed, OBE.

Sir Brian (give it time) is a force of nature and a national treasure, the only man whose CV can boast I, Claudius, Henry V, Blackadder, Flash Gordon and several assaults on Mount Everest. Right now though, he's using those marvellous lungs to lure you into bed - but not like that.

Blessed is easing our lockdowns with his first ever podcast, Brian Blessed's Bedtime Stories, courtesy of the comedy-loving radio station Union Jack. It's a series of fairy tales and fables, narrated in the inimitable Blessed manner. Fantastically bombastic, and anything but Grimm.

Now, time to read along in as deep a voice as it's physically feasible to muster - Brian Blessed, OBE, your Random 8 await.

Who was your first big-screen crush, and have you ever met them?

Sophia Loren!

I've always thought that she was just adorable, wonderful, excellent, and I was very fortunate to meet her when I filmed Man Of La Mancha, in which Peter O'Toole played the role of Don Quixote, and I played the villain, Pedro.

Sophia was in it, playing the peasant girl Dulcinea; I was shooting it for 15 weeks and so I was fortunate to get to know her well.

When we were in Italy, as I'm quite a mountaineer, I took her climbing around mountains such as Mount Etna and Vesuvius. We weren't lovers but we became great friends, and we went all over Italy climbing mountains together. I was incredibly lucky.

What's the best performance you ever gave?

This is difficult, because I won lots of awards for my role as Augustus Caesar in I, Claudius, but I always feel that my best performance was as Long John Silver in a series called Return To Treasure Island.

I'd always wanted to play Long John Silver. The series was based on the books by Robert Louis Stevenson and we filmed it with Disney HTV in Wales, and in locations such as Jamaica, Mexico and Spain.

It was a huge success and was on television for an hour each week. I was on the front cover of TV Times, and I can see the headline now, which said: "Shiver Your Timbers; Return to Treasure Island with Brian Blessed".

Is there a book or film that changed your life?

The book that absolutely changed my life was Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. It was the strangest thing because when it came out, the critics hated it, and it nearly broke her heart.

Eventually, I played Heathcliff in a Brontë Festival in Yorkshire and I went all over Brontë country - to the Brontë house, where she wrote Wuthering Heights. Wuthering Heights actually exists - just outside the Brontë home at Haworth Parsonage, where Emily Brontë is buried. Wuthering Heights is on the hill in the background; it's a cottage called 'Top Withins'.

The book, when it came out, was just too strong for the critics and they criticised it really heavily. The great tragedy is - and nobody really knows this - that she had written a second novel and she was so horrified, and so heartbroken, that she burned it. We don't know, to this day, what it was about.

Of course, months later, the world suddenly appreciated Wuthering Heights for what it was: bold, brilliant, powerful and dramatic - much more dramatic than Jane Eyre.

The best thing you ever ate?

I'm 50% actor and 50% mountaineer, so I've been all over the world and yet my favourite food is Bulgarian yoghurt - I could eat it forever! It makes my brain grow, it makes my muscles grow - it makes you strong and powerful.

What can you recite from memory?

Actors and people actually come to me because of my brilliant, and perhaps abnormal, memory. I even said to my wife the other day that it's a bloody curse, and she said, "no it's not darling, don't ever say that; it's a great gift." I can recite anything. I remember my childhood - I even remember being a baby! It's just extraordinary.

I was talking to a Newcastle FC supporter the other day, and I could remember that Newcastle won the FA Cup in 1951, '52 and '53; but I could also tell him the teams, their positions, and who scored when. He was shocked! I did the same for Manchester United the other day too - I can do it with anything, Shakespeare, you name it.

I just have this extraordinary memory which is probably my best gift - I can remember anything. It's almost abnormal, but there you are. I'm constantly quoting things, or singing songs; the brain never lets me off.

Who's the most interesting person you've ever met?

The Dalai Lama. I went to climb Everest in 1989, following in the footsteps of George Mallory, who had disappeared on Everest alongside his climbing partner Sandy Irvine in 1924. They were last seen around 800 feet from the summit, when the mist came down and they were never seen again.

I followed in Mallory's footsteps for a BBC film called Galahad Of Everest in 1991, when I was 55 years-old. Mallory was blessed by the 13th Dalai Lama; and the 14th Dalai Lama, who's the Dalai Lama at the moment, agreed to bless me like his predecessor blessed Mallory and Irvine - we went to Dharamsala and spent five days with him!

He blessed me - it's in the footage of the film - and then I went to exactly the same spot on Everest as Mallory had gone to, wearing exactly the same 1920s clothes. The Dalai Lama and I got on like a house on fire - we're the same age. I even asked him about his sex life!

I asked, 'don't you miss being with a young lady?' And he said, "Sometimes I think of a beautiful woman and then I do my mantras louder and take a cold shower." And then he said, "I do miss women. Nobody ever asks me questions like that!" It was lovely talking to him and I still see him from time to time. He's a gorgeous man.

The strangest thing in your wardrobe?

The strangest thing in my wardrobe is a pair of boots with a difference. I became the oldest man to reach the magnetic North Pole a few years ago - I arrived there in my 70th year, in 2006, with the British expedition.

I wore Mukluks, which are boots that are made by the Eskimos. They're made with various reeds, and fur from different animals, and I had no frostbite; my feet were as warm as toast for the whole expedition, and we were travelling in temperatures of 50 or 60 degrees below zero. I didn't feel any cold at all!

What's the best advice you ever got, and gave?

People have always said to me, isn't it dangerous going to Mount Everest? Isn't it dangerous going to the North Pole? Isn't it dangerous doing this and that?

And very early on in my youth, I was given the greatest advice I ever got, which was that the greatest danger in life is not taking the adventure. And I pass that on to people. We're all one-offs, so go for it - follow your dream! And don't let the bastards grind you down.

Brian Blessed's Bedtime Stories is a new weekly podcast created by Union JACK radio. Listen on-demand at unionjack.co.uk, via the Union JACK radio app, or through most major podcast channels.