“POOLE – what does it mean exactly?’’ asks Hollywood actor Dirk Benedict. He’s got me stumped, but I guess that it’s possibly named after the expanse of water inside the world’s second biggest harbour.

“Oh yeah, like Blackpool and Liverpool?’’ says Dirk, who, it occurs to me, is behaving a little like his latest character, Lieutenant Columbo, with this off-the-wall series of questions.

Best known as TV’s Templeton “Faceman’’ Peck in The A-Team, and Lieutenant Starbuck in Battlestar Galactica, Dirk will be donning the detective’s grubby mac at the Lighthouse, Poole, from June 15 to 19.

The stage show, Prescription: Murder, marks a first prolonged return to work for the ’80s superstar, who had slipped quite deliberately off the radar since 1994.

"It’s my first character role in my career, and the first time I’ve been on stage in 30 years," he says. "It’s a wonderful part. It’s also a role that’s closer to my own personality than most of the things I’m known for."

Dirk, who recently turned 55, has always been something of a loose cannon.

“I don’t live in Hollywood, and I don’t have an agent.

“I’m not pursuing a career – I got tired of all that after the A-Team.

“I live in a little cabin in the mountains of Montana with my sons.

“They’re out of the house now, but they talked me into doing theatre in England for one last time.”

Prescription: Murder is Columbo’s first ever case – the dishevelled detective featured in this stage play before Peter Falk immortalised the character on TV.

Despite having met Falk several times over the years, Dirk will be playing Columbo in his own inimitable way.

He reckons he’ll be helped by the surprising fact that he never watched the TV series.

“I’m serious," he laughs. “I’ve never seen it. You’re seeing a guy play Columbo who never saw the show. I’m doing it my own way, but I’m told it’s the way Peter Falk did it. You read the script and the character’s on the page.’’ In real life, Dirk reckons he’s a bit scruffy, like Columbo, and is also partial to a cigar or two. “He has ash and burns all over his clothes, he’s kind of a slob. I’m actually like that!

“In my career, I’ve played these clean-cut leading man roles, but in reality I have the unkempt hair and beard."

Despite his meteoric rise to fame, Dirk is something of a recluse.

His last sortie into popular culture was as a contestant on Celebrity Big Brother in 2007, appearing alongside the late Jade Goody. Since then he has kept a very low profile: “I walk around in glasses and a hat and nobody notices me.

“I look like a schmuck from nowhere. I blend in and you wouldn’t turn to look at me. You have to attract attention.’’ As our conversation meanders its way to an end, his natural curiosity resumes and we exchange odd anecdotes about running, smoking and seafood.

“I smoke about three cigars a day, and I go running every other day.

“I was running before anyone said you should do it. In the late 60s, people would stop and watch this mad guy running through the streets of New York. I invented that trend.’’ Dirk Benedict is refreshingly honest, funny and slightly barking. Be prepared for the waft of cigar smoke from a passing jogger along the South Coast seafront.