Wising up for the weekend

Comedy legend Norman Wisdom honoured at Barbican Centre

British comedy legend Norman Wisdom will talk about his 50 years in show business at London's Barbican Centre, kicking off a festival of his most popular, as well as rare, works.

The actor, now aged 83, is taking the stage on Thursday to converse with fellow performer Nicholas Parsons about his career, with clips from some of his funniest sequences being shown.

Also featured will be his 1993 appearance on The South Bank Show, and a 1961 guest appearance on Sunday Night at the London Palladium, described by some as "television variety's finest hour".

Films featuring Wisdom will be screened on October 31 and November , including favourites such as A Stitch In Time, plus rarities from American TV and an exclusive British premiere.

Wisdom's 50-year-career has seen him acclaimed in Britain and elevated to cult status abroad - he is treated almost as a national hero in, of all places, Albania, where his slapstick films were among the few western movies available during the country's Communist regime.

Norman Wisdom: In dramatic role as widower in Casualty

Recently he has displayed a more dramatic side, notably in an episode of the BBC One drama Casualty, portraying a pensioner devastated by the death of his wife from a heart attack.

A Stitch In Time, showing on Saturday is both Wisdom's personal favourite and his biggest box office success, while his 1920's period piece The Night They Raided Minsky's (also showing on Saturday) is notable as his first Hollywood film.

Sunday heralds the first showing of There Was A Crooked Man - described by Wisdom biographer Richard Dacre as: "Norman's best film and one of the great British comedies" - since its initial release in 1960.

Sunday also features the British premiere of Androcles And The Lion, in which Wisdom plays Androcles alongside Noel Coward's Emperor in a musical adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's classic.

Commissioned by American television in 1967, it has never been screened in Britain.