Video: Victor Spinetti at Theatre Severn

Paul McCartney once described Victor Spinetti as "the man who makes clouds disappear".

Sadly, Macca's old mucker hadn't quite managed it on the day we met. Dark clouds were gathering above Shrewsbury's Theatre Severn, where the veteran actor, writer and director is performing in the comedy play Murdered to Death until Saturday.

But, while the sky was not quite as pleasant as it could have been, inside it was warm and sunny as the amiable Welshman discussed the play and his career.

"I'm so lucky to be doing it," he says of the production. "What would I be doing otherwise? I'd be at home watching Bargain Hunt."

He is playing the butler, and this suits him down to the ground. "It's great. I come out, I butle and then I sit down again. It's a fun part. It's one of the most fun parts I've had in a long time."

"A long time" sums up Victor Spinetti's career perfectly. He's been at it for more than half-a century and, blimey, he can talk. In the 45 minutes we spent together I think I asked three questions. He's like a Duracell Bunny of chat: simply point him in the right direction and he'll keep going for as long as you like with anecdote after anecdote.

There's Richard Burton, with whom he worked on The Taming of The Shrew. "I said, Richard, to do an impression of you, you have to speak on the left hand side, use the vocal cords there. He said, 'That's right, I keep the right side for drinking.'"

There's Orson Welles: "I had to go down to his suite. He was too big, he couldn't get in the lift".

And let's not forget The Fabs. He appeared in all three Beatles outings, A Hard Day's Night, Help! and Magical Mystery Tour.

"George Harrison and John Lennon came to see the show I was doing in London at the time, Oh What a Lovely War, and they came backstage and George said (adopts Harrison's thick Scouse drone), 'You've gotta be in our film'. He said, 'You've got to be in all our films." And I said, Oh thanks, and he said, 'Yeah, because if you're not me mum won't come and see 'em because she fancies you.' And that's really the line that started it."

They got on well, he says, because "I never asked them for anything. Everyone said Get their autographs! Get this! And I said I'm working with them for God's sake."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6M3skID44Gg

Help! was a fun film to make, and the band didn't take themselves seriously as actors. "John said to me one day, 'Hey Vic, when the director shouts action all the other actors in the film change and you stay the same. Does that mean you're as terrible as we are?'"

He became good friends with Lennon – he is wearing a cap reminiscent of the one the Beatle had during his moptop days – and the two turned Lennon's books, 'A Spaniard in the Works' and 'In His Own Write' into a play at the National Theatre.

In those days Sir Laurence Olivier was in charge, and Victor does a good impression of the great man's clipped accent and luvvie speech: "Laurence Olivier said 'You'll have to come and direct it for us my dear baby because none of us understand it.' And there I was directing, now I never planned that."

Not planning anything has been the secret of Victor Spinetti's career. Born in 1933 in Cwm, Wales, to an Italian family, he had wanted to be a teacher ("all the coalminers told their sons not to be miners but to be teachers") but claims he wasn't allowed because of radical outlook on life.

However, an interest in amateur dramatics led to the Welsh College of Music and Drama and then London, where he starred on stage in the satire Oh, What a Lovely War. The show later transferred to Broadway and brought Victor a Tony award.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwJj2efChFk

"The less you want the more you get," he says. "The less you want the more you can give. I go around drama colleges talking to kids, and I say don't go into the theatre because you want something; go into the theatre because you might have something to give. Don't go because you want to be famous, or you want to be a celebrity, go because you might have something to give. And then in the end, if you're daft enough to want something like a Ferrari – see, I've never owned a car – it might turn up, but in the meantime you can dream what you want to do, and that means you're a millionaire."

Victor could have been a millionaire when the offer of a Hollywood contract came his way, but he turned it down. "It's not for me. I don't want anything. Honest to god I don't."

And yet, starting out, it seems people didn't have high hopes for him, particularly because of his surname. Victor Spinetti comes from Italian immigrants; his grandfather walked from Northern Italy at the turn of the last century to work in the mines.

"When I went to London to be an actor they said, 'Of course, you'll have to change your name, Mr Spinetti, we don't have that many parts for crooks or waiters.' And I thought, No. My grandfather walked across Europe carrying that name I'm not going to change it for a job. Of course, it stood me in good stead when I went abroad. In America there was De Niro and Sinatra and Spinetti. It didn't matter."

His name still doesn't matter. Well, sort of. John Nettles said they'd love to have him on Midsomer Murders, but "the trouble is we don't have that many Italian parts..."

• Tickets for Murdered to Death are available at the Theatre Severn Box Office on 01743 281281or by clicking here.