WHEN it comes to movie anecdotes, Barry Norman has them coming out of his ears. After five decades spent probing the good, the bad and the ugly of Hollywood, the legendary film critic certainly has a few stories to tell.

And tell them he does, kicking off this year's Bewdley Festival with a tale about Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor (under-the-thumb boozer wastes talent in mediocre movies) before moving onto two very different screen icons - John Wayne and Peter Sellers.

While grizzled Western star Wayne is portrayed as a set-in-his ways right-winger (via a ferocious argument with Norman about the Vietnam War), Sellers comes across as insecure and manipulative.

While Norman found Wayne to be an eccentric drunk, he said Sellers was a lying, self-centred man who frequently landed the hack in hot water during his time at The Daily Mail by feeding him exclusives, only to retract them once the presses had rolled. Norman brought both to life with two different but personal insights.

A question and answer section saw the audience pitch familiar questions: what is your favourite movie? (he doesn't have one), who from Tinseltown is overrated? (Titanic director James Cameron) and did he ever want to be an actor? (no, but an editor would have been fun).

In this section Norman is witty, thoughtful and most of all, bang on with his observations about the film industry. Most British pictures flounder because they are simply no good. Violence is fine as long as it is not gratuitous and special effects too often take centre stage, he says.

On the downside, Norman concentrated on a time frame, namely 1965-1975, which could isolate younger members of the audience.

He seems to have lost touch with the silver screen since the dawn of the late-seventies blockbusters, which appeared to suit the mostly 50-plus audience down to the ground.

However, Norman gave the audience a rare insight into a golden age of cinema and, most of all, the art of movie appreciation which has made him such a popular public figure. OE