GOLDEN Globe winning actor Sir Ian McKellen has led the tributes to his childhood friend and Nobel Prize winner Sir Harry Kroto, who grew up in Bolton.

The Lord of the Rings actor told an audience of Sir Harry’s friends, academics, students and members of the public at the University of Sussex about his decades-long relationship with the world-leading scientist and described what a “looker” his friend was in his youth.

The actor, described Sir Harry’s feeling of detachment growing up in Lancashire as a son of immigrant parents.

The two met at Bolton School which they both attended and where they starred in school Shakespeare productions.

Sir Harry died in May, aged 76.

He and his team made a breakthrough that changed the fundamental understanding of chemistry. The research into the identification of carbon chains in the interstellar medium lead to the discovery of the C60 molecule known more commonly as Buckminsterfullerene or Bucky Balls.

He won the Nobel prize for chemistry, a knighthood and the Michael Faraday prize.

Sir Harry’s Jewish family escaped from Germany as refugees in the 1930s and settled in Arkwright Street, Bolton.

Sir Ian described how his great friend always felt slightly detached at school because he was a boy of immigrant parents whose dad was incarcerated on the Isle of Man during the war.

He gave the audience a recital of Shakespeare’s The Bard of Sir Thomas More, citing the piece challenging anti-immigration rioters in London. Sir Ian said: "What a looker he was! I don’t remember falling in love with Harry but my, he was a looker. Having met at school in south Lancashire, there was no one who knew Harry longer in this room. “We were fortunate to go to a school where whatever you wanted to do — whether that was playing clarinet, in the arts or on the sports field, they backed you with whatever you wanted to do. It gave us enormous self-confidence..”

Former Bolton MP Dr Brian Iddon, a friend of the scientist has called for a lasting tribute to him in Bolton.