Sir Ian Holm left out in the cold as The Hobbit starts filming

Britain has few more respected actors than Sir Ian Holm, but Mandrake hears that the veteran of the Royal Shakespeare Company has still to be accorded the courtesy of being notified whether or not he will be required on the set of Peter Jackson’s eagerly awaited film The Hobbit.

“I don’t know what’s happening,” the 79-year-old actor admitted to me at the Saatchi Gallery. “I haven’t heard anything for weeks.”

Sir Ian had been in talks with the film’s producers about reprising his role as Bilbo Baggins, which he had played in the first and the third of the Lord of the Rings films, and in many newspapers and countless websites it is reported as a fact that he is included in the cast of the latest of Jackson’s J R R Tolkien’s adaptations to be made in New Zealand.

“I had great fun playing Baggins in the first two films and the plan had been, with Martin Freeman playing Young Baggins, I would be the Old Baggins,” he adds. “I suppose the earthquake in Christchurch couldn’t have helped with communications.”

Sophie de Stempel, Sir Ian’s wife, tells me: “I worry that the film has run into so much bad luck that they might have missed their chance altogether.”

Sir Ian’s fellow knight, Christopher Lee, 88, is also widely reported to be a member of The Hobbit’s cast, but he will say only that he follows such reporting “with great interest,” but says he has no more to add than that.

Melissa Booth, a spokesman for the company making the film, tells me simply: “Filming starts on March 21.”