The doorbell at Leslie Phillips's house does not go ''ding dong''. Nor does he answer with a lugubriously drawn-out ''hel-looow''. Instead the doorbell has a pleasingly old-fashioned ring and Phillips lets me in with a courtly ''How are you? Do come through''.

We make our way down a narrow hallway, then turn left into a lounge that looks rather like an explosion in an antiques warehouse. There is not a single surface left uncovered by books or porcelain or arcane objects: as for the walls, those spaces that don't boast groaning bookshelves are covered with paintings. Other pictures, photographs and assorted pieces of memorabilia are propped up here and there as space allows. Roaming around like masters of this domain are Mr Big and Mischa, the pair of Burmese cats that share this residence in the London district of Maida Vale with Phillips and his wife, the actress Angela Scoular.

Although it is late in the day - the appointment was arranged to allow Phillips time to travel back from Northern Ireland - he bustles about with an energy and purpose that would put others to shame. At the moment he is searching for the remote control to switch off the television - a high-tech bubble in this sea of antiquity - so we can talk without the hysterical braying of Ainsley Harriott. Once he has found it lurking beneath a pile of papers, he clears yet more paper off a couple of chairs and we sit down.

Leslie Phillips is famously 80. The BBC made such a fuss when he reached the landmark in April this year that you might have expected it to be declared a national holiday. He is unquestionably one of the great survivors of an unforgiving business and, as he embarks upon his ninth decade, he shows no signs of stopping. This is the time of his life when he should be slowing down: most men of his age have already notched up some 15 post-retirement years at the bowling club. But then Leslie Phillips is not like most men of his age.

So what's he been up to lately? He pauses. No, it's not an old-age moment. He hasn't forgotten - he's just thinking hard to make sure he doesn't miss anything out. ''I've got a load of films coming out,'' he says. ''And I've just done another one for a small company. But they're all different parts, which is the great thing. Another one I did a couple of years ago has just been screened at the Notting Hill Film Festival - that one's called Collusion - and I've just done Hitchhiker's Guide on the radio ...'' He extracts a promotional flyer from a pile of papers on the floor. ''I had a radio play on this afternoon, that was on Radio 4, and then of course I've just come back from doing a talk show in Northern Ireland.''

That said, he agrees it would be reasonable to expect him to be whiling away his days at that bowling club. ''Yes,'' he says, laughing gently. ''My brother, bless his cotton socks, retired at 57 and he phones me up and tells me I'm crazy.''

There is a gleam in Phillips's eye that suggests he knows deep down that his brother might be right - but, then again, if he is being crazy he's having a wonderful time doing it. He takes on new work for the same reason mountaineers climb Everest: because it's there. He has never thought much about his age and simply says that if jobs are there he'll do them - it's not as if he's digging ditches, is it? That said, he concedes that not thinking about his age was more difficult than usual this year because the BBC made ''such a big thing'' about his turning 80. Now that everyone knows how old he is, there seems little point in trying to pretend otherwise, so he graciously accepts every second person he meets telling him how good he looks for his age.

And he does. As he settles back in his chair he looks every inch the gentleman in repose, with his casually open-necked light pastel shirt above grey slacks and an immaculate pair of light tan loafers. A gold chain round his neck is the only obvious adornment, and although his hair has turned a sandy-grey there is still plenty of it.

Then there is the voice; that wonderful voice which, in Carry On Nurse or Doctor in Trouble, simply dripped with the promise of sexual assignation. It was his voice that made Phillips, a working-class boy with officer-class cadences, a star; and although there are many imitators, nothing quite compares to hearing the real thing. It is a little thinner now, a little lighter, but it is still the vocal embodiment of the decadent English toff.

The fact that celebrities such as Jonathan Ross still mimic Phillips's voice has helped ensure he is still an icon more than 25 years after the last Doctor film was made. Now he finds himself starring for Comic Strip director Peter Richardson in the new comedy Churchill: The Hollywood Years, or for Trainspotting's Danny Boyle with a cameo in his new film Millions. Phillips is the man the lads' mag generation most wants to grow up to be: before that they wouldn't mind being Michael Caine, but there is no doubt their idea of heaven would be to grow old as disgracefully as they imagine Phillips has done. The truth of it, though, is that there is very little disgrace in Leslie Phillips's life. Indeed, he is the very model of probity and professionalism. His image has been founded on one brief period in which he starred in three Carry On films, three Doctor films and a handful of other such

zany capers.

''I was such a small part of those films and it's a tiny bit of my life. The reason it's so important is not because of what I've done but this thing,'' he says, gesturing dismissively across the room to the television. ''They're on constantly. Last week they showed all three Doctors and they keep on showing them. And I don't participate in that,'' he grumbles mildly, echoing the concern of so many British actors who no longer receive royalties for their work.

An intuitive performer, Phillips was smart enough to know he would be forever typecast if he did too many of these films, so he turned down the chance to be a regular in the Carry On series. He suspected there was more to him than endless double entendres so he got out after Carry On Constable in 1960 (back when the films were still funny), though he did return for a brief valedictory in the very last outing in 1992, Carry On Columbus. He also turned down a Hollywood career. Before the Carry On movies he had starred opposite Gene Kelly in Les Girls; he says he loved being in Hollywood for work but could never see himself living there, so decided to come back to England.

The curious thing about his career, which went on to encompass films including Scandal, Out of Africa and Empire of the Sun, is that little of it was planned. Phillips's approach to work has always been to consider whatever comes up and do whatever has to be done: after all, that's how he got into the business in the first place. He was raised in a working- class family in Chingford, Essex; his father, Fred, worked for the local gas company but suffered from rheumatic fever and was a sickly man. He died at the age of 41, when Phillips was just nine. From there on everyone chipped in: his mother, Cecilia, took in sewing and mending; his brother and sister did what they could do to bring in money; and young Leslie pitched in by going on the stage. Not that it was a burning ambition - he was much keener on sport, he says - but his mother spotted a newspaper advert looking for youngsters to take

part in a performance and thought it could be another way to make cash. He got the gig, and within a year he was on stage in Peter Pan opposite Anna Neagle as Peter. The family moved to Tottenham in north London, yet it was still a hardscrabble existence even with everyone doing what they could to help out.

The memory of those tough childhood years has stayed with Phillips. In the fifties he was the first actor to earn (pounds) 1,000 a week from television; his film roles brought in even more money, but he remained careful. The house in Maida Vale was bought along with a cottage in the country, a property in Ibiza and a Mercedes. They were all bought in 1967 - a very good year, obviously, and he still has them all.

''It has affected me inasmuch as I am very realistic about money,'' he says now of his childhood. ''I'm not stupid about it; you have to watch it. There's not a lot you can do about pensions because they diminish, but I've been very sensible as much as I could be sensible in realising that (pounds) 10 is not going to be (pounds) 10 in 50 years' time.'' He smiles. ''I did work that one out.

''The bits and pieces I buy'' - he gestures around the room - ''I never sell anything. I wasn't born in that atmosphere. It's something I've grown to love. I can't stand anything that isn't old. I hate modern furniture; I hate almost anything modern. I love old things, and my mother was the same. She used to go to markets and I used to trot along with her buying the odd bits. She left me a few little bits '' And his voice trails off.

These pieces left by his mother are the most treasured of Phillips's eclectic collection. His lounge is arranged artlessly but everything in it has a story - which is why he cannot bring himself to part with any of it, especially not any of the pieces left him by his mother.

Cecilia Phillips's death 20 years ago after a street mugging has marked her son more deeply than anything else in his life. He explains that she was sitting at a bus stop when a gang of ''little more than children'' tried to grab her handbag. She hung on and would not let them have it; she was cruelly beaten and never properly recovered. Nine months later she died without having ever left hospital.

Although his life has been blessed with success, Phillips has had more than his share of hard times: besides his father and mother he has lost a sister, a child that died shortly after birth, and his first wife, who died in a house fire after they split. One of the advantages of age, however, is that it has given him a perspective that can only be gained by spending long hours deep in thought.

''I think most people have a number of things like that, don't they?'' he asks gently. ''Mine have been pretty bad, but the juxtaposition is that my life has been pretty good. You just have to take those on the chin. The biggest one, the one I found most difficult, was when my mother died - and then my sister died soon after and I adored her too. But really that is something I will never get over because it was an awful thing to happen. The horror of it was so unbelievable; there was nothing you could take from it.

''In the end I just took time to think, 'Why did this happen? Is there something I can find that will help me understand it?' I couldn't understand why anybody, let alone three children, would kill my mother in the street. I got thousands of letters - not out of sympathy but people telling me of their tragedies. That's why I say most people have something in their lives: if you do mention to someone about your tragedy, sure enough within a few minutes they'll tell you about something that happened to them.

''And with my mother I began to think, what would things have been like if it hadn't happened? She was 93 and her death was cruel and awful, but maybe it would have been worse if she had lived to be 97 and had to go into a home or something like that. I began to think like that, which is totally unacceptable yet inevitable.''

He pauses for a moment. ''I began to think that perhaps it was a horrible quick way that God had thrust upon us, but maybe it was a way of avoiding something even more horrible. I think, philosophically, there can always be something worse round the corner.''

Perhaps that explains why Phillips continues to work. CS Lewis said that pain was God's way of showing you were still alive, and for Phillips working and continuing to work is possibly a means of proving he can still take it on the chin. At a time when so many of his contemporaries have died - only June Whitfield remains from his Carry On cohort - he remains bloodied but unbowed, and still in the arena.

He has worked with directors of the calibre of Steven Spielberg and with actors such as Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, and has appeared on stage to great acclaim in Chekhov and Shakespeare. But the problem, of course, is that's just not how we think of him. At one point in the seventies, he says, he turned down every single light sex-comedy role he was offered in favour of more dramatic material; yet still he can't quite shake off the tag of the nation's favourite roue.

''If it wasn't for that'' - and again he points accusingly at the television on the other side of the room - ''I would have got out of it completely. That's what's done it. No residuals [royalties] either. I used to get a bit angry about that, but now I've stopped because there's no question that the reason I've become what they laughingly call iconic is entirely down to all that. They go all around the world - I get it everywhere.''

His mood lightens as he recalls the oddest place he has ever been recognised. On his way to Australia around 20 years ago, Phillips and his wife decided to go by way of Sri Lanka, and one of their destinations was the holy city of Kandy, capital of the country's Central Province. ''We went to a hotel near the Temple of the Buddha's Tooth,'' Phillips remembers. ''We turned up and I walked in and there was this little pageboy and he thought God had arrived. They were doing a series of English comedies on their television and I was in every one. They thought I was the greatest thing that had ever walked.''

Phillips says that if the phone rings, he works; if it stays silent, he doesn't. ''But if it literally stopped, if it really dried up, it wouldn't worry me,'' he says. ''Ange says it would - she says I wouldn't know what to do - but I'm not like that. I have so many activities, so many interests, that I could not work at all and be busy every day. I don't think I'll retire. I don't know what retirement is; I can't imagine it. It might happen that the phone doesn't ring, in which case I wouldn't work. I wouldn't call that retiring, though. I'd just wonder why the phone hadn't rung lately.''

He is interrupted by the phone ringing. You couldn't make it up.

''There we are,'' he says with a hint of pleasure as he reaches for it. ''They want something else. We're very unusual people, actors. We're like old soldiers. We just fade away. Or something like that.''

Churchill: The Hollywood Years opens on December 3.