COULD Colin Firth collect a best actor Oscar two years running?

That’s the question being asked now that his new film, The King’s Speech, has been unveiled. His performance as the stuttering King George VI is certainly going to win him awards and confirms him as one of, if not THE, leading British film actor around.

But at the press conference following the movie’s screening at the BFI 54th London Film Festival, the actor told how he suffered not a speech impediment but appalling stage fright last time he appeared on stage. Come opening night and the thought of opening the play with a two-page monologue, Firth took refuge in the toilet at the Donmar Theatre 15 minutes before curtain up.

“I wasn’t planning to stay there,” he maintains. Then he thought he needed some fresh air, exiting through a fire door – which slammed shut behind him. It was five minutes before curtain up. “So I had to go in the front through the audience. I was terrified. I had to go through all of them one by one with full body contact on the way. I didn’t have the passcode to get back in backstage. I had to beg to be let back in and was told to go straight on stage.”

★ HIS co-star in The King’s Speech, Helena Bonham Carter, gives every appearance of being, how shall we say tactfully, eccentric. She got in a verbal mess talking about playing her character, the Queen Mother. “I don’t look like her, I hope,” she blurted out, adding hastily, “I didn’t mean it like that”. Highly embarrassed, she stuttered and stumbled over her words before saying to herself, “Shut up” and remaining silent. A wise move in my opinion. She’d already admitted that she suffers stage fright just doing press conferences. “It’s not my idea of complete joy sitting up here,” she told journalists.

★ PEOPLE don’t always mean what they say or it comes out the wrong way. Like Mary-Louise Parker, who stars with Bruce Willis in the thriller RED. She was asked about dates she’d been on. “I have not been on many dates. I have just ended up living with people randomly,” she replied, hopefully unaware of how that made her sound.

★ TO HMS Belfast on the Thames for the launch party for HBO’s DVD and Blu-ray release on the war epic The Pacific, which counts Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks among its executive producers. Earlier in the day the warship was the venue for Damian Lewis at the premiere of The First Grader at the BFI 54th London Film Festival. Lewis starred as Soames Forsyte in ITV’s version of the Forsyte Saga and in the US tv series Life interviews with stars Jon Seda, Joe Mazzello and James Badge Smith (see WEEKEND centre spread).

They were there in the evening, along with several bands and a mixologist (a chap who mixes cocktails).

We were also promised that someone from another HBO hit, vampire tale True Blood, would be there. He took some spotting, as he was dressed casually topped off with a beanie hat. You had to stare hard before recognising Stephen Moyer, alias vampire Bill, especially as he had a child with him and not his co-star and new wife Anna Paquin.

★ ON the subject of public speaking Australian actor Geoffrey Rush, who plays George’s speech therapist in The King’s Speech, recalled something said on TV’s Seinfeld show – that more people have a fear of public speaking than dying.

★ REGULAR Mike Leigh collaborator Lesley Manville is being Oscar tipped for her performance in the British director’s latest film Another Year. But Doctor Who fans will be more interested in another new film in which she appears – in Womb she plays the Time Lord’s mother. Or rather the mother of the character played by current Doctor, Matt Smith.