David McCallum's early life as an actor and stage hand at Chesterfield's Pomegranate Theatre

David, best known for his roles in television’s The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and NCIS, died of natural causes in a New York hospital on Monday just six days after his birthday.

During the Fifties David trod the boards at the Pomegranate Theatre where he is reported to have performed in Hobson’s Choice, Vanity Fair and Aladdin in 1954.

Retired teacher Margaret McCall recalled in a Derbyshire Times article five years ago how David was working as a stage hand at the Pomegranate where he was told to put a bag of soot up a chimney as part of a production.

Margaret said: “When it was stabbed, he had put up such a big bag that the soot covered the first two rows of the audience and the council had to pay for their clothes to be cleaned.”

David went on to become a teen heart-throb in the Sixties when he played Ilya Kurakin in the British spy series The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and 40 years later was cast as medical examiner Dr Donald ‘Ducky’ Mallard in NCIS. He landed roles in more than 40 films including The Great Escape, Mosquito Squadron, The Watcher In The Woods and Hear My Song.

Radio presenter and former clergyman Richard Coles posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter: “Oh how something stirred within me when Ilya Kurakin affixed his silencer! RIP #DavidMcCallum.”

British astrologer Russell Grant posted wrote: “RIP at 90 years old David McCallum, born in Glasgow and a big part of my on-screen growing up.”