“LIFE is hell with happy moments.”

That was the standout line from actress Sheila Hancock at Helen & Douglas House fundraiser Full Circle, which took place on Sunday.

But fortunately for the audience, her words did not echo the feel of the evening at the Oxford Playhouse.

The idea, based on Radio 4’s Chain Reaction is that a group of people take it in turns to interview each other, with the last person coming full circle to interview the first interviewer.

First up was BBC arts editor Will Gompertz interviewing author Anthony Horowitz.

The beauty of the formula is that the celebrities reveal little-known tidbits about themselves.

In the case of Mr Horowitz – author of the Alex Rider books, Foyle’s War and a host of other works – that included a revelation he shared a dormitory with Supermarket Sweep presenter Dale Winton at school and became a writer because he was “no good at anything else”.

Mr Horowitz then turned the tables and interviewed Sheila Hancock, widow of Inspector Morse actor John Thaw and a prolific and successful actress in her own right.

As well as riffing on the subject of being old, the joys of hypnotherapy which she claimed had helped her with everything from general wellbeing to stopping smoking, and providing a nod to the Oxford audience by reminiscing about staying in the city with her husband, Ms Hancock proved a vocal exponent of the joys of musical theatre. The Cabaret and Sister Act star declared herself sick of people being “snooty” about musicals.

But it was when she interviewed Dr Emily Harrop – one of the doctors at Helen & Douglas House – that she revealed most about herself, talking about the four-year-old grandchild who survived a brain tumour, and her passion for palliative care and the frustration with doctors eager to cure rather than help people die with dignity.

Dr Harrop brought a certain gravity to the occasion, explaining how to discern levels of pain in very disabled children, and describing how one child told her “my back is a dinosaur and my head is a tiger on fire”. The trick in treating the patient, she told the audience, was ascertaining how big the dinosaur was and how extensive the fire.

She also moved some of the audience to tears as she spoke about ‘a good death’ for children, and how a child had passed away while being read a story which he had enjoyed.

Then the spotlight was back on Mr Gompertz, who described the terrors of his brief experience as a stand-up comedian, stressed the importance of education despite leaving school before he was 16, and told the audience about how, when working in a holiday camp on ‘grab-a-granny’ night, he had stood with nothing but a newspaper covering his modesty which was then ripped off until barely a fragment remained.

The night offered everything from gentle comedy, to sharply acute observation, to moving accounts of real life tragedy.

The evening raised about £3,000 for Helen & Douglas House Hospice