Love's labours are not lost for Sir Peter.

(From Western Daily Press)

ASK most successful people if they're a workaholic and they're likely to deny or defend the label. But ask Sir Peter Hall and the answer is out before the question is finished.

"Yes," he says, without a nanosecond's hesitation.

"I don't know quite what a workaholic is, but so many people have told me I am that I must be! I'd sooner go to rehearsal than I would go on holiday, I really would."

He gives a low chuckle, which rumbles amiably from the ample chest contained inside his tie-less blue shirt and muted brown suit.

He looks a little like a slimmer Orson Welles, with echoes of Falstaff after a few weeks on Slim-Fast.

In the middle of his forehead, there's a distinctive V-shaped groove, as if he's been clonked by the point of a flat iron, and as he speaks it becomes more pronounced whenever he's being earnest or passionate about something.

And what he's passionate about right now is the summer of love which he's bringing to Bath Theatre Royal - …