Donald takes an unlikely role

Sir Donald Sinden has only to say a fruity "Hello?" in that hot-buttered-toast voice, and suddenly one is transported to a more decorous age, where kettles sing, radios take forever to warm up and chaps take their hats off to passersby. But for a man who will be 80 next year, Sinden is going great guns. When I phoned him in Australia last week he was touring in an RSC production of The Hollow Crown, motoring around with Diana Rigg, Derek Jacobi and Ian Richardson. This week he will be back in London, taking part in a bizarre event: a live performance of a radio adaptation of a John Osborne screenplay for a film that has never been made.

"It was really rather extraordinary," says Sinden, explaining how Osborne had laboured over a film-script based on a book about the Charge of the Light Brigade, only to discover that someone else had already commissioned a script. This became the epic starring Trevor Howard and John Gielgud, while Osborne's version was forgotten.

But now the director Bill Bryden has assembled a distinguished cast - including Alec McCowen and Charles Dance - to record a radio version of the rediscovered script, to be broadcast on Radio 4 tomorrow.

"Such a starry cast can only be assembled for radio," says Sinden, without pomposity. "You couldn't afford to pay them for film or theatre." He thinks about this for a second, before admitting: "It's because it was Bill Bryden that we all jumped in. We wouldn't have done if it was Charlie Snooks."

They are jumping in again on Sunday, for a live performance in aid of the Royal Theatrical Fund, of which Sinden is president. "The Fund was started by Charles Dickens," he explains, "and we're now the leading charity for anyone connected with the theatre who falls on hard times."

This, one imagines, must include pretty much every actor in Britain. "We go through each case history in detail. The first thing we do is say 'get rid of the credit cards', because that's the biggest danger."

For all his old-world gentillesse, Sinden s views are forthright, as he recently revealed in his broadside against the threat to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon ( It s not the theatre that s too big, it s the actors that are too small ). Indeed, one can almost hear him rolling up his sleeves as he barks from Australia: I hope to take this up strongly when I get back.

"There's nothing wrong with that theatre. Gielgud gave some of his finest performances there, not to mention Olivier, Vivien Leigh, Michael Redgrave and Peggy Ashcroft. I've been acting there myself since 1946, no problem at all. If they build another theatre, the next director's only going to say: 'We don't like this

one, either.' You can't please everybody. All you've got to say to the incumbent director is: 'That's the theatre you've got, and if you don't like it, go somewhere else'."

You can't resist asking Sinden in this mood for some tittle-tattle about his charge around Australia with the light brigade of Rigg, Jacobi and Richardson; wild tales of late-night carousing with a cat-suited Emma Peel, Brother Cadfael and Francis Urquhart. But Sir Donald will have none of it. "Historically, actors have always been most responsible," he insists. "We just have a little scrambled egg and go to bed. But we're loving it," he adds. "And the troops are in very good heart."