I have a confession to make. I'm not proud of it and it's something I rarely reveal. But I feel now's the time to come clean.

I have never seen Star Wars.

I've got no idea whether C3PO is the little robot or the big gold one, I don't know what a Jedi is and if I'm honest I don't really get the whole Dark Side thing.

I can't believe I've managed to reach adulthood without having seen Star Wars, I don't know anyone else of my age who hasn't seen it. The closest I came to it was buying a little Han Solo figurine once because I was in love with Harrison Ford. Not enough to watch Star Wars though.

I know it's one of the most popular films ever made, that it was groundbreaking and hugely significant in cinematic terms and that it's meant to have a special place in all our hearts.

But it has simply never appealed to me. Science fiction leaves me cold. A friend who loves Star Wars so much he used to have a cardboard cut-out of one of the characters (don't ask me which one) in his home has tried in vain to get me to watch it, trying to assure me that Star Wars "isn't really science fiction".

I'm not convinced. There's no way I'm spending two hours of my life watching a space fantasy with talking robots in it. I'd rather watch darts - and I hate darts.

So I'm probably not the best authority to write about a one-man show paying tribute to the film-that-everyone-else-of-my-generation-has-seen-apart-from-me, but here goes.

In a recent survey, Sky Movies discovered that the Star Wars Trilogy were the most watched films by all male respondents and the second most watched films by female respondents, with 50 per cent of all participants claiming they had watched the films more than 20 times. Canadian actor Charles Ross has seen them far more often Star Wars was a major part of Charles's life while he was growing up in the wilds of Victoria and as a result he wrote One-Man Star Wars Trilogy, condensing the plot into 60 minutes and single-handedly playing all the characters, singing the music, flying the spaceships and fighting both sides of the battles. It's a high-energy blast through the sci-fi adventure films.

After its 2001 debut, the show toured Canada and America to great acclaim. Star Wars creator LucasFilms loved it so much the film company hired Charles to promote Star Wars: Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith.

It's been an Edinburgh Festival hit and Charles has performed it around the world, even while backpacking in Turkey! He once recited an extract to the bemused presenters of BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

Now he's touring it around the UK, prior to performances at Glastonbury. The tour concludes with a performance at Star Wars Celebration Europe in London, marking the 30th anniversary of the release of the first Star Wars movie.

It all started for Charles when he spent his childhood in a galaxy far, far away. "I lived on a farm in northern Canada. We had long winters where it would drop to minus 40C so I spent a lot of time indoors," he says. "We had no TV reception so I watched videos. We only had three - The Blue Lagoon, Shogun and Star Wars - so nine times out of ten I ended up watching Star Wars. A lot of times it would just be on as background noise, a lot of it went into my head through osmosis and become committed to memory."

While he loves the traditional storybook adventure element of the movie, he seems resigned to the fact that it has simply become part of him. So how did he turn his encyclopaedic knowledge of Star Wars into a one-man show?

"I've got a degree in theatre but actors are often out of work so I wanted to do my own one-man show to get a bit of autonomy," says Charles. "One-Man Star Wars Trilogy started as a comedy sketch then my director T J Dawe and I turned it into a one-hour piece. It went down really well at a fringe event in Toronto. Everything's gone on from there."

Charles isn't sure exactly how many times he's seen the Star Wars films but is pretty sure it's way up in the hundreds. His favourite character to perform is The Emperor, "because he's a rotten b*****d and Iain McDiarmid who played him is a fantastic actor. The most difficult to play is Yoda because the pitch of my voice is different to that of Frank Oz, who did his voice."

Charles says you don't have to be a Star Wars fan to enjoy the show, so there may be hope for me yet. "It's probably worth hiring the DVDs before you come to see it though because the better you know the films, the more you'll enjoy them," he says. "Although if you haven't seen the films at all, it'll be a bit like watching a game of cricket when you don't know the rules!"

One Man Star Wars Trilogy is at St George's Hall on Saturday, June 16, at 7.30pm. For tickets ring (01274) 432000.