Even royalty want to know if Jon Snow is really dead, says Kit Harington

Even the Duchess of Cornwall is keen to find out whether Kit Harington's Game Of Thrones character Jon Snow is truly dead, the actor has revealed.

Long-standing character Jon was brutally stabbed and left dying in the snow at the end of the fifth series.

Despite the death scene, Harington has repeatedly been forced to quash rumours that Jon could secretly be alive and ready for a comeback.

Asked on the Jonathan Ross Show about whether his character is really deceased, the heartthrob actor said: "I get this from everybody.

"Me and my brother got invited to Wimbledon, as you do, and a Royal was hosting, we didn't know which Royal it was, and it was the Duchess of Cornwall and she was hosting it.

"And we got sat with her, me and my brother, and she leant over the table and said 'Are you dead?'

"No word of a lie."

Harington, 29, was spotted filming in Belfast as Jon Snow recently, further fuelling the rumours.

But he told Jonathan Ross: "I was playing a corpse. I was there for a little bit, I was there for about a month or two months, it was spread over a bit and I was playing a corpse."

Questioned further about how filming corpse scenes could take so long, he said: "I won't tell you how many episodes I'm lying dead but it's enough that I was out there for quite a while.

"It's going to be so satisfying when you see it and you realise that I was telling the truth the whole time."

The actor will soon take to the stage in Doctor Faustus at London's Duke of York Theatre.

Discussing his take on the 400-year-old Christopher Marlowe play, he said: "It's very contemporary, it's very modern, it's cinematic, it's exciting, it's got bodily fluids flying around all over the place. I get my arse out."

State school-educated Harington also addressed the idea of private school domination in the acting industry, calling for more funding.

He said: "I think it's that private schools and public schools have a much better system in place for getting their students into the industry, for training their students, and I think the state school system needs money pumped into it and is lacking in that department."

But he added: "There are actors who I'm friends with who are from private and public school who are very, very, very good actors, very serious about their job.

"Just because they are from that background doesn't mean they should be sort of held up as that's their fault."