"I’ve always considered myself to be a team player," says distinguished character actor Moray Watson with a smile. "So it’s quite a surprise to me that I seem to be doing solo performances these days." He’s also surprised that they have been such a runaway success: Ancestral Voices, his readings of the diaries of James Lees-Milne, created four years ago in collaboration with writer Hugh Massingberd, were hugely successful. It was simply Moray on stage with no gimmicks and no effects. Just good acting really. As journalist Gyles Brandreth put it: "A great actor at the height of his powers."

When I interviewed Moray then at his home in Barnes, he said he didn’t think it would last long – but it would be fun to do. He was wrong. It’s still doing well, and he is frequently touring the country and playing to full houses in theatres, clubs and country homes. Now, four years on, he has gone one step further down the solo road. This new enterprise is entitled Looking Back and Dropping Names and it’s a collection of anecdotes about some of the most distinguished and respected actors of the past: Margaret Rutherford, Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson, Cicely Courtneidge, David Niven, Celia Johnson, and some from the present: Catherine Zeta Jones, Patricia Routledge, Terence Stamp, David Jason.

It’s quite a diverse lot. "Well, I suppose it represents different periods of my life. Ray Bolger is one of the earliest. He starred in a film called Where’s Charlie? I was virtually a chorus boy. And I worked with Cary Grant, Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr in a 60’s movie, The Grass is Greener and I was the butler. I also include the work I did at the Haymarket in the mid 60s with Wilfred Hyde-White and Ralph Richardson whom I adored. They were all so different, those knights: Redgrave, Richardson, Olivier and Gielgud."

Talking to Moray, it becomes clear that he is still very stage struck. "Yes, I am," he agrees. "I always was, from the age of eight or nine. And it wasn’t because of school plays. It was trips to the theatre – and all credit goes to my mother for that. She used to take my brothers and me during the school holidays. I admired Cicely Courtneidge from afar. Of course, I did get to know her when I was an actor, but as a boy I was so much in awe of her. I saw her in two musicals at the Palace Theatre. I feel I could almost go to the seat I sat on!"

As well as having enjoyed a very fruitful and acclaimed stage career, Moray is a very well known face on TV. He tends to play English gentlemen who have a brisk, soldierly walk and high standing in the community – judges, colonels, politicians. He began in the early 60s with the cult series Compact. It was actually quite ahead of its time, showing the ups and downs of life at a women’s magazine. "I wasn’t very keen," Moray recalls. "I just wanted to do theatre. My agent made me do it. He gave me a lecture. He said, ‘Moray, for the last five or ten years, you’ve been playing to audiences from 250 to 1,000 people. If this Compact thing takes off, you will be playing to possibly ten million people twice a week! So I did it."

He played the very solid Barrington Earle in the BBC drama The Pallisers, and he played Judge Frobisher in Rumpole of the Bailey, the Brigadier in The Darling Buds of May and Mr Bennet in the 1980 version of Pride and Prejudice. He has played guest roles in some popular TV series: Sir Leo in Campion, Sir Robert Muir in Doctor Who, Colonel Arthur Bantry in Miss Marple: The Body in the Library and Sir Nigel Toft in Rude Health. In 2002, he played Lord Dawson in the acclaimed drama Bertie and Elizabeth about the life of the Queen Mother.

Moray is never surprised at the similarity in the kind of characters he is constantly asked to play. "I know I have a sort of posh voice that’s not particularly fashionable nowadays," he says with a smile. Born in 1928 and educated at prep school followed by Eton, he is unobtrusively chivalrous, tempered with a down-to-earth professionalism and a sense of humour that allows him to laugh at himself. After school, he did his stint of National Service, then studied at the Webber Douglas Academy, where he met his wife Pam, whom he married in 1955. She died seven years ago, and photographs of her lovingly adorn the walls of the house, along with pictures of their children and grandchildren.

It was a very happy marriage and Moray clearly misses his wife, but he isn’t a man to dwell on the past. He likes to be busy – and is certainly in demand at the moment, and he goes to the opera, even though he complains that it’s very expensive, but he also enjoys his home life. "I’ve lived in Barnes for 12 years," he says with satisfaction. "I’ve no intention of moving. I’ve got my little garden and I’d be lost without that. I’ve just had a makeover – that’s what they call it these days, isn’t it? I’ve never had a gardener before but I looked at it last October and I thought I would get someone in to push back the sides, and it’s a bit too much for me."

We go into the kitchen to look outside and the shoots of the roses are coming through and the birds are flocking around the many feeding stations Moray has put up for them. It’s a haven in every sense. We wander back into the cosy sitting room and Moray comments, "You know, these terraced houses are so perfect – they’re not too big. There’s no need for me to move. No, I shall stay put until they drag me out!"

And what does the future hold professionally? "Well, I’ve got some dates for Looking Back and Dropping Names coming up. I’ve been turning down bits of TV I’ve been offered because it clashed with Ancestral Voices. That’s the frustrating thing. People keep saying to me they’ve seen me recently on the box but it’s all repeats. There are so many channels now. Of course, television slightly dries up when you get to my age, but I don’t want anything gargantuan. Maybe there will be a few judges and brigadiers and grandfathers. If there are - well, so much the better!"

Moray Watson is performing Looking Back and Dropping Names at the Jermyn Street Theatre on several dates during May. For information and booking call the box office: 020 7287 2875.