IT is not often the phone rings on a Friday afternoon and the caller says something as interesting as “would you like to meet Al Pacino on Sunday?”

When these opportunities present themselves, questions can wait: Yes, is the answer.

As to the 'why', the gentleman in charge of the company organising the evening, Deepak Kuntawala, is from Cheam and the PR man had dialled slightly the wrong number and came through to News Shopper rather than our south London sister paper, the Sutton Guardian.

Clearly, at that time on a Friday it was too late to rectify. And Andrew Parkes, who is the boss at both papers, said it was fine. So there.

Unfortunately, it turned out that due to “internal management problems” access to Al had been revoked so I wasn’t going to get to meet the man once voted the greatest film star of all time.

My dreams of a picture next to the diminutive actor, which I could have captioned “say hello to my little friend” would have to remain just that.

But, I was at the exclusive An Evening with Al Pacino at the London Palladium on Sunday (June 2) to see the Godfather’s first British event of this kind and, such was the demand, tickets were apparently changing hands for £600 (though I’m sceptical).

As host Emma Freud said, Al is intensely private. She said: “He has turned down every chat show on TV and every feature writer you can think of.”

So, in not interviewing Al Pacino, Vibe is in good company.

A montage reminded the audience of Al’s greatest hits, though most of them did not need reminding - The Godfather trilogy, Scarface, Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, Scent of a Woman, Any Given Sunday, Heat, Carlito’s Way, Devil’s Advocate.

A thunderous reception greeted the New Yorker as he took his seat on the stage, looking perhaps a few years younger than his 73, dressed in a black suit that looked a couple of sizes too big for him and his shirt untucked.

God knows what the lady from Vogue sat next to me thought, but I found his slight shabbiness endearing.

Of course, with Al in charge of proceedings, there were few nasty surprises in the way of questioning, but he was charming, relaxed and easy with the conversation.

As an audience, we learnt Al came from a broken home and grew up in Manhattan’s tough South Bronx.

He wasn’t allowed out until he was six, but used to play tag on the rooftops.

We heard he was a smoker by nine and, oddly, a pipe smoker by 11.

“I was dramatic,” he quipped.

A lot of his friends from his neighbourhood died young, and Al was beaten up regularly, but acting saved him.

He said: “I was very lucky because at school I was into the drama world. I love teachers. I have always had them in my life.”

When he was a child, his drama teacher visited his grandmother – with whom he lived- and told her Al ought to pursue acting, which he said was virtually unheard of as a career path.

An aspiring actor, he did odd jobs at theatres and shared a flat with Martin Sheen as he succeeded to make it on Broadway.

His big film break came in The Panic in Needle Park, which allowed director Francis Ford Coppola to persuade the studio he should be cast in The Godfather.

Al said: “I enjoyed making Scarface. I cannot say I enjoyed making The Godfather. I was very lucky – it was a great movie.

“It was really lucky that he wanted me. He was the only one, by the way, who wanted me.”

He later added: “They didn’t want Brando either.”

But Al made it through, the intense restaurant assassination scene was apparently enough to satisfy the studio he could be Michael Corleone, and he was Oscar nominated.

Fame, he said, “feels like being shot out of a cannon” and the trick to coping with it is to simply “adjust”.

Al described actors as “emotional athletes” and is clearly still in love with his craft.

The most revealing part of the evening was where Al discussed, or largely refused to discuss the roles he didn’t take.

According to the actor, Francis Ford Coppola once said: “The only way Pacino will do a movie is if you shoot it in his home.”

The Hollywood great revealed he turned down both Marlon Brando and Martin Sheen’s roles in Apocalypse Now, Dustin Hoffman’s role in Lenny and could have even been John McClane in Die Hard.

He joked: “I gave that boy (Bruce Willis) a career.”

The same was true of Harrison Ford too, he reckoned.

He said: “Star Wars was mine for the taking but I couldn’t understand the script.”