The oldest Cats in town

There is no getting away from Cats, as Brian Blessed revealed at a cast reunion for the show which celebrates its 20th birthday today.

Blessed, the original Old Deuteronomy in the show, told how he was wandering across the ice floes last year 50 miles from the North Pole when he came across an igloo.

Inside was an eskimo playing on an old banjo - and what was he playing? Memory. "I could not believe it," said Blessed. "That's success - and the banks wouldn't touch it in the beginning."

Since its debut at the New London Theatre in 1981, which ended dramatically with a hoax bomb-scare, the show has taken more than £125 million in London alone. Worldwide, the total is more than £1 billion.

At the reunion, Blessed met the present Old Deuteronomy, Dave Willetts, and reminisced with another pioneer, Bonnie Langford, the original Rumpleteazer.

Cats, with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, set producer Cameron Mackintosh on his way to unimaginable success. It is still a fixture at the New London. Though it has ended on Broadway, the show can still be seen in Hamburg, Budapest and Japan.