Our local equivalents are the late Sir Christopher Lee and the inimitable Brian Blessed.

Lee was once told by a director "Imagine the sound of a man having his throat cut." Lee replied "I don't have to, I know what it sounds like.". On another occasion he said of his war service "I served with the SAS. Let people make what they will of that."

As to Brian Blessed, not only is he the oldest man to have reached the magnetic North Pole on foot, but while there, he punched a Polar bear on the nose!