GARY Waldhorn has been a star of stage and screen for decades now.

He has played in Shakespeare and Beckett productions, films and innumerable television shows, but will forever be associated with one of the most popular sitcoms ever devised.

In the popular mind the chances are that he will always be David Horton, father of the dippy Hugo and constantly at loggerheads with The Vicar of Dibley.

Yet the man with a major role in the Royal Shakespeare Company's new production of Much Ado About Nothing says he knew from day one that Dibley would be a big hit.

"I knew it was a good script when I saw it," he said. "I saw the first two episodes and I thought this was really worth doing.

"Richard Curtis, who writes it, is fantastic and just the best comedy writer. He's unique and, I think, absolutely brilliant and I was thrilled to be asked to play that part."

He recently returned from Florida and said: "It is on all over the USA on cable television. Because they keep repeating it everybody thinks we have done 40 episodes whereas in fact we did 16."

Gary, now aged 58, always wanted to be an actor and even after his parents emigrated to America when he was a teenager, the transatlantic move did not put him off.

"I liked acting as a child and I remember as a first-former in London we were given tickets to the Old Vic to see a Shakespeare play.

"I saw Richard Burton play Henry V and my life changed. I came home and said I wanted to be a Shakespearian actor."

The acting bug never left him and he acted throughout school and college, determined to make it on the stage.

After completing his education in America he decided to come back to Britain to try his luck. Several auditions later he landed a part in the Regents Park Open Theatre and has never looked back since.

His stage career has included Cyrano de Bergerac, As You Like It, Henry IV Parts I and II, Waiting for Godot and Six Degrees of Separation and even another role in Much Ado - Don Pedro in a 1975 production at Manchester Royal Exchange, which was actually performed in the city's cathedral, because the theatre building was not ready.

On the small screen he has appeared in shows, such as Rumpole of the Bailey, The Chief, Lovejoy, and another big sitcom hit - 1980s favourite Brush Strokes, where he played the role of Lionel, the doting father.

So far he is thoroughly enjoying Much Ado, having previously appeared with the RSC only once before - in C.P. Taylor's Good, which went to Broadway in 1982 - "I nearly fell over myself to do it because it was a wonderful play and a wonderful part."

Back to Much Ado, though. "It is really rather exciting and the audiences have been very noisy in their appreciation," he said.

He believes that a comedy like Much Ado needs a live audience. "It gives it a phenomenal atmosphere with a big, big audience as they have at the RST."

His fellow actors in the play include Harriet Walter and Nicholas Le Prevost as sparring lovers Beatrice and Benedick.

Not all his roles have met with the critical acclaim of Vicar of Dibley. His film credits even include a small part in Escape to Victory, the film about footballing prisoners of war.