Exactly 150 years after he starred at the Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh, Charles Dickens - presented in the well-rounded form of Simon Callow - has returned to the venue, apparently every bit as popular now as he was in his Victorian heyday.

Dickens was “a rock star of his day” and “they were beating down the doors to see him” when he put on his own show in Edinburgh, said Callow, whose show, A Festival Dickens, has rapidly become one of the hottest tickets on the Fringe, simply because the author's work still resonates so loudly today.

“Dickens was a great comedian and it's great that people are still finding the jokes he wrote 150 years ago so funny. He had this other whole self as the performer and I think that is the quintessential Dickens. When you read his books you can almost hear him reading it to you.

“What I am doing is proof of that. Dickens's critical reputation has risen and fallen and risen again, but I don't think he has ever fallen out of favour with the public,” Callow said.

Dickens's spirit is very much alive in the elegant spaces of the Assembly Rooms, where the author's popular readings were staged. Callow acknowledged that the sense of place created “a great sense of connection” to the author. His message, too, was easy to communicate to modern audiences.

“It was something to do with his energy and the scale of his imagination. He was a big-spirited man, very loving and full of a profound compassion for humankind. It is very unusual in our world to have people who are so affirmative without qualification. Dickens just said, ‘This is injustice, it must be stopped', or ‘This is good, it must be endorsed',” Callow said.

In his show the 59-year-old actor performs the Dickens stories Mr Chops - the Dwarf and Dr Marigold.

But while he revels in Dickens's fictional world, Callow admitted that he would have found living in the Victorian era difficult. The actor, who is taking part in a discussion called Gladder to be Gay? at the Festival of Politics next week, said that attitudes towards homosexuality were now “a thousand times better”.

Conversely, not everything about today's society would have appealed to Dickens, Callow said. He would have been shocked by the sexual mores of the Fringe. And although Dickens had a mistress, he felt unable to acknowledge her and he would have been dumbfounded at the idea of multiple partners and that sex today is “flashed about everywhere”.

He added: “The paradox of life is that sometimes oppression creates very good things.”

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