“RETIRE?” roars actor Brian Blessed. “I will never retire. Everyone’s concerned about bloody dying and retiring – bugger off!
‘I push myself every day because of the adventures I want to have. I want to be the Terminator for the next 50 years. I’ve been up Everest three times and I’m going into space.”
He might be 83 but Blessed has no intention of slowing down any time soon as he explains over lunch with old pal Brian Jacks.
The Daily Star arranged for the pair to meet up after we featured Jacks’ autobiography last week in which Blessed wrote a foreword praising the former Olympian and Superstars athlete.
They first became friends doing judo together in London during the 1960s and have stayed in touch ever since.
Blessed says: “I was in Z Cars at the time as PC “Fancy” Smith, the tough guy, and the BBC were worried because I could get hurt. We had 28million viewers a week.
Brian Blessed says he has no plans to retire (Image: Getty Images)
“Brian was wonderful to watch at judo – he had tremendous energy, technique and power, a true champion.”
Jacks laughs: “Going on the mat with you was like going on with an ox. It was like trying to throw a block of houses!”
As the pair reminisce about their days in the dojo and the stars who would pop by – Sean Connery, The Goons – Blessed tells of his next ambition…going to Mars.
“From the age of seven I’ve wanted to go,” says the Flash Gordon star. “I’m a fully-trained cosmonaut, I’ve done space training in Moscow and with NASA and I tell them: ‘Will you get on with it?’
“We don’t just belong on Earth. We’re the guardians of the planet but we need to get out of here. You cannot solve the Earth’s problems by just remaining here. We’ve got to go to Mars and beyond.”
Brian has no plans to slow down (Image: ITV)
Blessed might actually be going to Mars for a new film as he reveals he’s been approached about a sequel to Flash Gordon – the camp 1980s space adventure in which he played king of the hawkmen Prince Vultan.
There’s even talk of him being digitally de-aged for the role, like Robert de Niro and Al Pacino in Netflix movie The Irishman.
“I’d do it again,” he say. “They want to do Flash Gordon on Mars and make us younger – they have the techniques to do that now.”
His famous line in the film – “Gordon’s alive!” – has followed Blessed all over the world, from the North Pole to 10 Downing Street.
“Wherever I go in the world, I get asked to say ‘Gordon’s alive!’” he says. “In 2012 I was 20 miles away from the magnetic North Pole on an expedition and a Russian submarine came through the ice alongside us.
“Out got the admiral, he saw me and went: ‘Please say Gordon’s alive!’
Blessed says he never goes into politics, preferring instead to work with animal charities (Image: PA)
“Halfway up Kilimanjaro, a Masai tribesman asked me to say it. I was once at a meeting at 10 Downing Street when David Cameron was PM and he suddenly appeared and said: ‘Brian, please say Gordon’s alive! And I went inside and said it to the whole cabinet.”
Jacks, 73 – who smashed out a record 100 arm dips in a less than a minute while he was on Superstars -now lives in Thailand where he runs a hotel.
While he’s happy we are getting out of the EU, he has no intention of coming back to Britain. He says: “I’ve represented my country in the Olympics and there’s no one more patriotic then me, but I have a great life in Thailand and I just don’t understand this country now.”
Brian Blessed with his old judo partner Brian Jacks and Nadine Linge (Image: Tim Merry)
Blessed says he never goes into politics, preferring instead to work with animal charities, but says he could have been the new voice of Big Ben when it went under repair.
He says: “There was talk of my voice being the bong. I did Watchdog when it was looking at how technology damages our hearing.
“They measured my decibels against a jet. The jet got 118 decibels and I did my King Lear roar and it was 127 decibels. It’s nice to know we can beat the machines.”
While both men keep themselves active, Blessed is still full of admiration for his pal’s sporting efforts.
Blessed says: “No one has ever equalled his dips – it’s one of the greatest achievements in the field of athletics.
“I keep myself fit so I can achieve all the things I want in life. I train like s**t with weights every day.
While both men keep themselves active, Blessed is still full of admiration for his pal’s sporting efforts
“I get sick of all these dreadful adverts on TV for retirement and insurance – no tricky questions like have you got galloping knob-rot, you get a free pen, it’s a weight off your shoulders. I want to say, ‘in that case, we’ll take you into the back garden and shoot you.’”
Jacks and Blessed will be reunited once more in May at the UK Martial Arts Show in Doncaster, where Jacks will mark 40 years since his dips record with a special charity zone where kids can try out fitness challenges.
Blessed will be there to support the event although he tells Jacks there’s no point trying to get him on his mobile phone.
“I call them wobblies,” he booms. “I don’t have one.”
Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
