Show must go on despite star’s heart scare

Actor Ian McDiarmid insisted on finishing his performance in a West End play despite suffering a suspected heart attack.

Following the old theatre adage, "the show must go on", the actor, right, who played Emperor Palpatine in Star Wars, refused to leave the stage at the Gielgud Theatre despite paramedics waiting in the wings.

McDiarmid, 64, was nearing the end of the opening night performance of Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters In Search Of An Author on 15 September when he began to feel dizzy. Concerned backstage staff called for an ambulance 10 minutes before the end of the play but McDiarmid insisted on doing the curtain call.

He was then taken to see a doctor in hospital, who ordered him to rest before he returned a week later.