“And, if you were to ask people here what I did for the 10 years I was in America I’m sure they’d look absolutely blank.”He sounds resentful “No, not in the least,” he denies “I realise people’s imaginations are limited I was frustrated. I did westerns, I played Americans in American films, in one, Serial, I was a tough businessman in the week and at weekends the head of a band of gay Hell’s Angels.”The briefest of pauses “Do you think I’d have been offered that here?” he thunders “Not in a millennium,” his voice roars to a crescendo. And how did it do? It was the third highest-rated show they ever had. I hosted Saturday Night Live with John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd.

Where the British are inclined to say, `You have got a, you have got b, but you haven’t got c, the Americans say, `we’re going to use what you have got’.”It is evidently a source of some pride to him that he was offered roles that proved he was capable of far more than sinking his teeth into young maidens’ necks “Half of what I did in 10 years was comedy It’s on the screen. And, of course, if you get bored you’re going to bore the audience.’”The Americans, on the other hand, will always give you one chance. People said to me, `If you stay in Britain you’ll make a very good living but you’ll never be asked to do anything else You’ll always be in roughly the same kind of film And eventually you’ll get bored and frustrated. “Professionally, without doubt, it was the most important thing I ever did And, without doubt, it had to be done And, without doubt, I proved my point.

It’s never been done.” It was to escape this typecasting that he packed his bags and spent 10 years in Los Angeles, returning to London in 1986. Only then if someone did Stoker’s book exactly, and I emphasise exactly, as he wrote it. “I made it very clear that the whole presentation of the character had gone completely to pot So I said, never again Not unless they made Stoker’s book. But the last time was 25 years ago.”By that stage he says he’d “had enough” of the Prince of Darkness. “Is that too strong a word?” I ask, feeling like a schoolgirl who’s just used some inappropriately hip slang “Good, I would think, is the word,” he replies steadily.