Actor Timothy Spall drops in to Oswestry

The actor, who lives in Forest Hill, London, was spotted in the town's main shopping area before popping in to the Abbey Color photography shop in Church Street.

Shop owner Gareth Watkin admitted he didn't recognise the famous face to start with.

"He was looking in the window and a man in the shop said 'Isn't that Timothy Spall?'," he said.

"He came in and bought a second hand film camera that I'd had on display for a while.

"He also took a pair of binoculars – the sort you would use for birdwatching.

"He said the camera was for a present. He didn't say what the binoculars were for, but I know he does a lot on the canals, and enjoys his boats so maybe he was going to use them there.

"He spent about 10 minutes in the shop. He had looked in the window and so he had an idea what he wanted when he came in. I asked him what he was doing in Oswestry and he said he was just visiting."

Mr Watkin said other people in the town had been quicker to recognise Mr Spall than he had during his visit yesterday.

"When he left the shop he was walking down the street and no end of people were stopping him and asking him for photos," he said. "He was a very pleasant man and he was posing for no end of pictures."

The 57-year-old actor made his name in the ITV series Auf Wiedersehen Pet and has gone on to become one of Britain's most accomplished television and film actors.

He played Peter Pettigrew in the Harry Potter film series and took on the role of Winston Churchill in the The King's Speech. He is currently starring as Lord Emsworth in the BBC1 dramatisation of PG Wodehouse's hilarious Blandings books which are set in a fictitious castle in rural Shropshire.

But he also has a love of boats and embarked on a voyage from Fowey in Cornwall to West Wales on a Dutch barge for a BBC documentary called Timothy Spall: Somewhere At Sea.

The show was a big hit and the Queen was also a fan, asking the BBC for a box set that she could watch at her leisure.