Rowan Atkinson has finally admitted what comedy connoisseurs have been bemoaning for years: the Mr Bean films were ghastly. The actor voiced his dissatisfaction at the weekend in advance of his appearance next year in Oliver! at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, as Fagin, Dickens’s villainous advocate of “picking a pocket or two”.

“My problem is that, although the films have undoubtedly been commercially successful . . . an awful lot of what we have done has not been good film-making,” he said. “I find it frustrating that, apart from Four Weddings and a Funeral, I have yet to be involved in a film of which I am totally proud.”

One hopes that his theatrical debut in the West End is closer to his small-screen triumphs as Edmund Blackadder than his erratic big-screen career, which has ranged from an inept would-be spy in Never Say Never Again to a bumbling actual spy in Johnny English.

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