Dan Haynes ANDY Serkis took some time out from the Berlin Film Festival to have a chat with the Journal about his forthcoming Halesworth appearance and announced that he will be bringing a rather special guest with him.

Dan Haynes

ANDY Serkis took some time out from the Berlin Film Festival to have a chat with the Journal about his forthcoming Halesworth appearance and announced that he will be bringing a rather special guest with him.

Serkis, Hollywood star of Lord of the Rings, King Kong and most recently Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll, has been booked to perform at the Hope for Haiti concert taking place at The Cut on Sunday, March 7.

And if Serkis's presence in Halesworth isn't enough to get you starry-eyed, then perhaps the latest celebrity to be added to the line-up is.

Chas Jankel, guitarist and keyboardist with Ian Dury and The Blockheads, will be playing a couple of numbers with Serkis at the fundraising gig.

The pair worked with each other on Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll, where Serkis played Ian Dury and Jankel composed and arranged the music. They live near each other, and have since started playing music together.

Serkis was promoting Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll at the Berlin Film Festival when he spoke to the Journal. On Tuesday, he was back in London to present Dizzee Rascal with the best British male solo artist at the Brit Awards.

He said he had been recruited to appear at the event by Bernard Hill, a fellow star of Lord of the Rings, who lives locally and has co-organised the gig with The Cut's Annette Dunning.

"Bernard phoned me up and said, 'We really want to do something positive about Haiti,' mainly to get over the inertia that something like this causes," he explained.

"One has to drag oneself out of a sense of hopelessness and get off your butt and do something about it.

"I admire Bernard and Annette for getting it together; it's all so easy to let these things slip by."

He said the songs he and Jankel would be performing were a secret, but he admitted that they had considered performing some Blockheads numbers.

Serkis is working on a new film with Simon Pegg entitled Burke and Hare, about the 19th-century grave robbers.

Following his success as Gollum in the epic Lord of the Rings films, he is due to revisit the character in the forthcoming film The Hobbit.

"I've never been to Halesworth before," he added.

"I'm very much looking forward to coming down."

The gig is the second of two being

held at The Cut, both headed by Bernard Hill and raising funds for Haiti.

The first takes place a week tonight and will include performances by Rave On, a tribute to Buddy Holly and The Crickets; singer-songwriter Matthew P; funk-rock band The Fuzz; and guitarist Alan Bates.

The second, on March 7, will include performances from Lee Vasey, Andy Serkis, Ed Sheeran, Guateque, and a band from the amplifier project.

Tickets cost �15 and are available from www.newcut.org.