Mother Goose's Silver Jubilee, York Theatre Royal, December 10 to January 31

BERWICK Kaler makes York a happier place, but he is not a comedian. Never has been, glad he isn't, in his silver jubilee year as the York Theatre Royal pantomime dame.

"I get annoyed when people think I'm a comedian with an act. If I had been, I doubt I would have done 25 years here," says Berwick, 57-year-old dame of dames (1977-2003), honorary doctor of the University of York (2002), and Honorary Freeman of the City of York (2003).

"In comedy, you have a rise and fall and, if you're lucky, very lucky, you have a comeback, like Norman Wisdom and Frankie Howerd... eventually."

Frankie - York's other comic institution - did foresee Berwick's longevity. "I was doing Great Expectations in Canada with Sir John Mills, and I was sitting on the fridge in his crammed dressing room when Frankie came in to see Sir John.

"I was quite young at the time, and Frankie got into this talk about predicting the future - apparently, he was into the psychic world - and he was telling me what I would do," Berwick recalls.

"He never said I would be famous but I remember him saying it would be worth my while staying in the business."

In the comic tradition, Berwick has always taken the funny business very seriously, and that is but one reason why next week's opening of Mother Goose marks his 25th anniversary as the Theatre Royal dame (he missed a couple of years, 1986 and 1987, when commitments elsewhere precluded his panto participation).

The nation at large seems to be catching on at last in his silver jubilee year, when he will play Sharon Minger, more decoratively known as Old Mother Goose. The Daily Telegraph did a feature asking him to define humour for children; all this month BBC Radio 4 is tracking the pantomime's progress in preparation for a documentary on December 29.

Berwick, being Berwick, is honoured by the York gongs but sceptical about the widening fame.

"I am very proud of the Theatre Royal pantomime, but I don't want us to be put on a pedestal by anyone, because there is a risk of that this year and I know what will happen. It would be an easy road for a newspaper to take the opportunity to knock the show when we're only doing the 'same old rubbish' we always do!" he says.

Humour is such a fine line, he says.

"If we get knocked it will be by fly-by-nights, not by those who have supported us over all these years. Watch the show once and nothing makes sense and you think 'Well, that was a load of rubbish', but then you come back the next year and everything fits."

That applies even to Berwick himself. When he first pulled on the wig in 1977 at the age of 31, it was not to play dame but an Ugly Sister.

"I thought of it as another villain role," he says. "In my days before the York panto, I used to play demon to Stephanie Carter's fairy in big commercial pantos and I made my name as the youngest ever villain at 19 or 20 - and that's why David Leonard's villain is always the best written part in my scripts because I loved playing that role."

Happy chance has played its part in the Kaler success story, be it this son of Sunderland's idea of a Yorkshire accent instead giving him an even more amusing North Eastern voice or the reason he ended up wearing his trademark coarse, anything but glamorous wig.

"How that occurred is that Michael Winter, the director, asked me to play a man in a frock, so they got me the frock but they didn't have a wig. I asked someone from wardrobe to buy me one, as quickly as possible, and they came back with that one. I paid nine shillings and 11 pence, and I'm still using the same wigs today when they cost £15-£20," he says.

How did Berwick feel pulling on a wig for the first time?

"As soon as I put it on, I said 'Right, I'll have a go'," he says. No frills, no make-up, no nonsense. He has applied that policy whether performing, or subsequently taking over the script writing or co-directing the shows.

"My first year in the York panto, we were using a tired old script, my costume came down, the stage came down, and that's where I got my reputation for ad-libbing. After the opening night, the Evening Press critic wrote that 'If only Mr Kaler could repeat his performance of last night, the show would be better for it, though I doubt he can."

Director Michael Winter had doubts too.

"He told me off for going off-script... well, he was a very good director but he didn't understand panto. Normally, the director does his notes in order of importance in the cast, but he deliberately left me till last and said 'If you think Berwick's performance was professional, think again'. I learned later that he'd been on the floor with laughter as he was watching the show."

Winter's discontent made way for admiration, leading to an invitation to Berwick to do the scripts, but not before Berwick had offended the writer of his third show as dame.

"Alan Drury had written a very high-brow Victorian pantomime, where my opening line was 'Hello boys and girls, do you like my velocipede?'. I started ad-libbing to save the show and to this day I still remember the sound of chair seats bashing back as Alan and his agents left the theatre."

This year, against all past form, Berwick finished his script a week before rehearsals. Only he could find reasons to be worried.

"It gave me an extra week to think this is the biggest load of rubbish I've ever written," he says.

Happy 25th anniversary, Berwick.

Mother Goose's Silver Jubilee, York Theatre Royal, December 10 to January 31. Box office: 01904 623568.

The special Kaler years

1977 Cinderella

1978 Jack And The Beanstalk

1979 Dick Whittington

1980 Mother Goose

1981 Aladdin

1982 Babes In The Wood

1983 Cinderella

1984 Sinbad The Sailor

1985 Jack And The Beanstalk

1986 Berwick absent

1987 Berwick absent

1988 Humpty Dumpty

1989 Aladdin

1990 Mother Goose

1991 Dick Whittington

1992 Babes In The Wood

1993 Jack And The Beanstalk

1994 Sleeping Beauty

1995 Cinderella

1996 Mother Goose

1997 Aladdin

1998 Beauty And The Beast

1999 Old Mother Milly

2000 Dick Whittington

2001 Jack And The Beanstalk

2002 Babbies In The Wood

2003 Mother Goose

Appearance record

Mother Goose, Jack And The Beanstalk, four each;

Dick Whittington, Aladdin, Cinderella, Babes In The Wood, three;

Beauty And The Beast, Humpty Dumpty, Sinbad The Sailor, Old Mother Milly, Sleeping Beauty, one each.

Updated: 16:27 Thursday, December 04, 2003