Robert Lindsay: the Stylish Personality of TV sitcom

The most horrible thing regarding fame is that people consider they recognize you, "sighed Robert Lindsay, drawing a lot on his cigarette." But they do not. They just know the characters you play, not you as a person.“As never been a passionate political activist, a citizen of Smith?”Oh, yes Robert was entirely like me, in the mid seventies.

But you're not grumpy middle-aged dentist Ben Harper and disappointed in my family? "Oh no, I'm not at all. I have reached the stage where disproportionately me cranky about speeders and tilt at windmills useless as Don Quixote."

Right. And you didn’t feel any urgent need to conserve, for example, identification of the supports of the other characters you exposes on stage? Like the bowler hat and cane to the entertainer or the royalty brocade Richard III or the heavy-framed glasses of his recent stay as Onassis?"I have all of them. My house is full of things like that," he says without a hint of irony.

"I'm appearing in The Lion in Winter Jo Lumley front end of this year and still I have my crown of Richard III, so I will remove the dust down."I have my dress, though, I donated to a charity auction, and made £ 12,000, can you believe it? I never would take the crown, however, though even they is mine."

No one would think of disputing his Bafta-winning three Olivier, Tony Award right to the throne of the West End. Now aged 61, Lindsay is an anomaly. He is also one of the best theater actors of his generation with a stage presence no less than electrifying - rolling on the gods as Cyrano de Bergerac, Richard III an attractive, Derek Jacobi Becket to Henry II - and the star of my family, one of the oldest and most comedies cheesy arguably in the history of television.