Honor Blackman - Word of Honor

Sheringham Little Theatre

Sheringham Little Theatre

Honor Blackman arrived on stage singing and left the stage singing in a wonderfully intimate evening.

The 80-year-old grandmother and former Bond girl and Avengers star spent an amazing two hours on stage recanting her life, from a wartime childhood to working with the likes of Sean Connery, as Pussy Galore, Dirk Bogarde, Dean Martin and Elizabeth Taylor.Despite being a full house in Sheringham's Little Theatre - tickets sold out weeks before the show - Honor made it feel like she was talking to everyone in person about her life's ups and downs.

Starting with childhood, without a bathroom in a London flat, evacuation during the war, and vignettes of her disciplinarian father, she went on to describe the loss of her brother, who died aged 36, followed by her father and learning she could not have children.

But with consummate professionalism and sparkling enthusiasm, dressed in black trousers and top with sequins, she then recounted the good times, including her adopted children.

She told of how she was asked if she minded laying in the hay with Sean Connery for a while during the filming of Bond film Goldfinger. “Mind?,” she said, smiling wickedly.

After the interval she came back on stage - forever the glamorous, but not over painted, granny in a gold glittering dress.

There were a few times she had to refer back to her “crib sheet” but she made light of these and any slight memory lapses were soon forgotten as she nimbly performed a past audition piece, hopped up from her seat for water and sang the night out with an impersonation of Marlene Dietrich.

Had she gone on for longer the audience would have happily stayed.