Hi-De-Hi legend Jeffrey Holland had forgotten he worked with British acting icon Sir John Gielgud until he sat down to write his new memoir The First Rule Of Comedy...!

Speaking exclusively to before the launch of the tome, which sees him revisit his life and career utilising anecdotes of all the people he has worked with during his long career, he admitted he found long-forgotten memories flooding back.

"One of the outstanding things to me as I dredged up the memories was the fact that I worked with John Gielgud in three different engagements!" he exclaimed.

"I say I worked with - I was in the same shows, not necessarily in the same scene, but we were on the same stage in the same event as it were.

"One of which was a charity pantomime, and he wore a costume that I have previously worn in Mother Goose, and the panto was the same name, and he wore it as the king of Goose Land, which I played previously, years before," he recalled.

He also recalled working with a music legend in that show, as John performed a duet with . "They did that song, Me And My Shadow," he recollected.

Gielgud won the 1982 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his work on the romantic comedy classic Arthur.

Jeffrey worked with many other legendary names over the decades, and there is one he remembers as being somewhat difficult: Up Pompeii star Frankie Howard. However, his experience dealing with Frankie, who died in 1992, helped build his confidence in his own abilities.

"When I was doing a pantomime with Frankie Howard, and he wasn't the easiest to work with - that's all in the book - I realised that he talked to me and looked to me in rehearsals for ideas. Comedy ideas," he said.

"And I realised I could help him at that time, largely because of the work of the experience I had working with David Croft and Jimmy Perry (legendary comedy writers) up to that point.

"Hi-De-Hi hadn't come along yet but I'd done Dad's Army for them, the stage version. I'd done two episodes of Are You Being Served for David, two episodes of Dad's Army when the stage show finished, and all the all the comedy experience came into good use.

"And that's when I realised, 'yes, I'm actually quite experienced now'. And it did suddenly occur to me back in the 70s, how much I'd already achieved," he said smiling.

With so many high profile roles in comedy series under his belt it begs the question if he has ever minded or worried about being typecast. "You can either like or hate that pigeonholing," he said. "I'm known as comedy actor Jeffrey Holland, although I'm just an actor.

"There are some places I go to work where I'm only ever booked to play drama, which is lovely to stretch those muscles. But it's, it's a thing I'm very, very proud of - in fact, the my last line in the book is how proud I am of it - being involved in a success like Hi-De-Hi. A whole lot of actors go through their careers without that kind of notoriety. How lucky am I?"

Jeffrey Holland's memoir The First Rule of Comedy...! is available to buy on now.