Dame Judis charity wardrobe change

By Tim Walker Published: 9:58PM GMT 19 Feb 2010

Previous of Images Next Dame Judi Dench is to auction off the Elizabethan dress she wears in Midsummer Night"s Dream Photo: ALASTAIR MUIR Radiance and humour: Dame Judi Dench as Titania in A Midsummer Night?s Dream at the Rose Theatre, Kingston Photo: ALASTAIR MUIR

I hear, however, that she is happily parting with even more than that at the Rose Theatre in Kingston where she is playing Titania in Sir Peter Halls production of A Midsummer Nights Dream.

"She is to auction off the Elizabethan dress she wears in the play to raise money for the theatre," says my man in the stalls. "It is not exactly the sort of thing you would pick up from Oxfam, but it is a part of theatrical history."

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Dame Judi, pictured in the dress, only wears it on stage, naturally. At a local restaurant where she recently adjourned with fellow cast members, it would have made her look a trifle overdressed.

Pryce reduction

Jonathan Pryce is still big, but his dressing rooms would appear to be getting smaller. The fine actor admits that the one he currently occupies at the Trafalgar Studios in London, where he is appearing in The Caretaker, is somewhat modest and he has to climb no fewer than 78 steps to reach it.

It was not always like this. Misty-eyed, he writes in Bonhams Magazine how, when he appeared in My Fair Lady in Drury Lane in 2001, he had a dressing room that consisted of a kitchen, drawing room, dining room and bathroom.

Before that, when he had appeared in Miss Saigon in 1989, Sir Cameron Mackintosh, the producer, had obligingly brought in his own interior decorator to refurbish his stars dressing room for him. "It spoilt me for ever," he laments. "Now I expect it all the time."

Off-road Brown

It isnt just spelling that sometimes defeats Gordon Brown. Geography would also not appear to be a strong suit.

Talking about congestion on the roads in Northumberland when he appeared on a phone-in programme on Real Radio Northeast, he assured a listener that he knew the area very well.

"I was in the Lake District for my holidays this summer so I saw a great deal of it and my children and my wife enjoyed being in the Lake District very much," he said.

Jonathan Morrell, the presenter of the programme, replied: "Yeah, although thats the other side of the country, Prime Minister. I think what Louise is talking about is Northumberland."