Not even the revelation that she is now Professor Fiona Shaw, having  been awarded an Honorary Professorship of Trinity College Dublin, could erase the emerging picture of a mischievous irrepressible imp who escaped the clutches of deep seated catholicism in her native Ireland.

Yet for all that she has achieved in  her life - a clutch of Olivier awards as Best Actress,  London Critics Award for Best Actress and the Evening Standard Award for Best Actress - she is refreshingly modest and funny. Her Irish eyes never stop smiling.

Fiona has decided to put the bard on the back burner for now to seek roles with a comic vein. I suppose that would explain her recently filmed, but not officially reviewed, role in The Avengers feature film, about which she says "there is nothing to tell you".  Nothing to tell you, about the supporting role which paid her more money than anything she's ever done! It must have been bad, when you consider that the professor openly admits that she hasn't been silent  for a single hour of her life, since the day she was born.

After meeting her, I will see the film after all.

Unquestionably, the informed audience see Fiona Shaw as an enigma of achievement, and under achievement, but clearly she is opening herself up to new opportunities and with nudging might increasingly come to  recognise the depths of her own talents.

She talks dauntingly about the difficulty of being a director, yet few of us would consider her incapable of any thespian activity to which she set her mind. She shows lack of interest in writing but writes aloud while she talks the hind-leg off the proverbial donkey in a string of humorous, anecdotal remembrances.

Her energy, inherited from her mother, is at once a blessing and a liability. She recalls that in the silence and languidness of a Tai Chi class she was reaching out for contentment and peace and a state of nirvana. She was blissfully unaware of her fellow beings, but they were not unaware of her. The instructor asked her to stop. "What do you want me to stop" she asked.  "Everything!" he said.

Fiona Shaw is an actress because she could never see herself being anything else. It has orderliness. It is tidy. You know exactly where you are - and surprisingly, honestly, she admits to it being a glamorous activity. On stage, by becoming someone else she guards herself against a loss of privacy. Which complies with her mother's dictate that "anything worth knowing is not worth knowing publicly."

That's only true when you have a lot to hide, Professor. You will enrich your life and ours when you put your thoughts on paper, and if you can't bear the thought of the silence and want to talk to someone about all that's in there - call in a ghost writer.

Like me.

John Timperley