Widely recognised thanks to his imposing stature, distinctive voice and trademark beard, Brian Blessed is one of the borough's most famous faces and has certainly come a long way since his days as a youngster in Mexborough.

The son of a South Yorkshire coal miner, Brian was born in 1936 in Mexborough and grew up in the mining village of Goldthorpe. He trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School before beginning a distinguished and varied career and is now one of this country's best known actors.

Hollywood star Brian told how his experiences growing up in mining towns first inspired him to become an actor.

Brian said: "People were facing death every day. My father, who worked at Hickleton Colliery, was gassed three times and injured when he was crushed in a rockfall - so the camaraderie was sensational and there was singing and poetry. It was inspirational."

Brian will star in a specially created concert version of Bizet's tragic and romantic opera Carmen at the Hampton Court Palace Festival on June 5, that promises to be one of the highlights of the packed line-up. In this unique performance all the famous and much-loved overtures, arias and choruses are linked together by narration from Brian who will play the ageing Escamillo alongside an international cast of leading opera singers, the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra to make a truly memorable performance.

As well as his credits on stage and screen, Brian has also written five books and is a keen outdoors man. Since the late sixties Brian has had a great love of mountaineering and a great desire to stand on 'the top of the world'. He has been on three expeditions to Mount Everest. The first to make the film Galahad Of Everest, a tribute to George Leigh Mallory. In 1993 he returned to Everest, this time to climb the Southern side where he reached a height of 28,000 feet – the highest a man of his age has achieved without oxygen. He returned to the Northern side in 1996 when the climb was filmed by a Channel 4 Television team as part of the Encounters series. Brian has also completed a trek to the North Pole, an expedition to The Lost World in Venezuela, and most recently a climb to the summit of Mount Ararat in Turkey at 17,000 feet.

He will be performing at the Hampton Court Palace Festival where he will be narrating " Carmen In Concert" on the 5th of June. For further information about the line up at this year's Hampton Court Palace Festival, corporate hospitality or ticket bookings, please call 0844 412 2954 or click here to visit www.hamptoncourtfestival.com