Preluded by a stand-off between the organisers and ardent Idris Elba fans who'd just sat through a ramblethon from Mark Read to see their idol, the A-Lister was as engaging and charismatic as anyone could have hoped.

On his way to the Truman Brewery to see Idris Elba on the London Stage at SXSW, your correspondent was nearly knocked off his bike by an aggressively driven limousine with darkened windows. Given how close this happened to the venue, it seems highly probably that Elba was languishing in the back of the vehicle, thinking about what he was going to say to a packed room of his fans.

Meanwhile, in the venue itself, hundreds of people were listening to Mark Read of WPP as he offered his take on AI, four day weeks, and anything else that came into his feverish mind.

While Read might expect to command a big audience at Cannes Lions, this was not his crowd. It was Idris Elba's. And this was made abundantly clear at the end when a lot of the audience dragged their heels as the stewards tried to clear the room.

Many refused to budge and, after a chaotic stand-off, the organisers must have realised that, even if their entire security team was called to the scene, they would still be outnumbered, and they quietly capitulated, allowing the group of more than a hundred to stay.

Phones to the fore in the audience.

The session was a game of two halves as Elba spent half the time talking about an app called Talking Scripts which, he revealed, has been a boon to him and others working in the film industry who suffer from dyslexia. Director Stefan Schwartz spoke passionately about the difference this technology has made to him as interviewer Clara Amfo charmingly asked both about their respectively difficulties.

Then the conversation moved on to the Akuna Wallet, which has been designed to help those financing film projects to more easily move money across borders. This, it became clear, is a particular difficulty that arises when, as Idris Elba hope to do more often, films are being made in African countries.

He was joined on stage by Ghanaian fintech expert Kwadwo Owusu-Agyeman, who is the managing director of Akuna Wallet, as well as Ghanaian star DJ Vyrusky and creative technologist, product designer and musician Manon Dave.

Idris's A-team.

The breadth of Idris Elba's ambition was unleashed as he spoke about his hopes to build the African Odeon to instil a new love of cinema across a continent that currently has only three thousand screens. (For the purposes of comparison, the UK alone has more than four and a half thousand screens).

All of this spilled out of Elba with a great deal of charm and humour - at one point he began a reverie about his Ghanaian mum when Amfo used the word 'audacity' to describe his ambition, repeating the word a few times in his mum's accent as he recalled being chided for his audacity as a young man.

The fandom was fandomming.

It was hard to judge how the army of Idris Elba fans felt about this event. On the one hand, they got to spend some time in his proximity, but on the other, he spent most of his time on stage talking fairly dryly about stuff that sits way way behind the camera.

As is often the way at industry events that feature a star of his lustre, the cheer as he took to the stage at the start was far louder than the ovation at the end when he had finished. Make of that what you will.