An evening with Brian Blessed

Monday night is normally fencing night, but when the offer of tickets (with thanks to Shullie and Loops) to see Brian Blessed talk about his remarkable life came up, how could I refuse? I wasn't entirely sure what to expect, but the lecture hall at Sheffield Hallam University was full to capacity with several hundred people of all ages. The University had recently award an honorary doctorate to Brian in recognition of his achievements in acting, exploration and charitable work, and conferred the honour at the end of a performance of Aladdin where he was playing the role of Abanazer.

Brian Blessed is quite literally larger than life - huge in stature with a voice, personality and beard to match. His entrance, to rapturous applause as he glad handed the first couple of rows of the audience, was something to behold. He reminisced about his boyhood in Mexborough and his memories of wartime bombs, collecting shrapnel and his early schooling. He rambled and digressed through anecdotes about his varied acting career with roles from Shakespeare to Flash Gordon, and then changed gear slightly to talk about his adventures as an explorer.

He described himself as half actor and half explorer, and told of the problems and eventual success of his efforts to raise funding for an expedition to recreate the efforts of the early attempts to climb Mount Everest with the same primitive equipment and clothing as those pioneers. He described the experience of being at high altitude with almost evangelical fervour, and how his first sight of the mountain caused him to fall to his knees with emotion. He has returned to Everest on three different expeditions and is now planning a trip to the deepest part of the ocean and into space to the International Space Station when he will be seventy one years of age.

He invited questions from the audience, and took the opportunity to expound about his meeting with the Dalai Lama, coincidentally the same age as him, and recalled his rather cheeky winding up of the venerable monk who fortunately, it seems, has a rather good sense of humour. He also told of the challenge laid down by his friend, the actor and director Kenneth Branagh, to appear on 'Celebrity Stars in their Eyes' as the opera singer Luciano Pavarotti. He gave a brief, but astonishing rendition of 'O Sole Mio' which proved that he has a fine singing voice amongst his many other talents.

One of his recurring themes was how people should not be held back in their efforts to achieve their dreams and their own personal Everests, whatever they might be. He spoke with some anger about the casual pigeon holing of young people as trouble makers and boozers, when he had met and worked with many young volunteers and actors making a positive difference to their communities. To those who questioned whether he should be undertaking perilous expeditions to the far flung corners at his age instead of quietly retiring, he replied : "It's not how old you are, it is how you are old".

A remarkable man.