Once I make the wrong decision Babbies, I stick to it.

Around this time last year I came up with the idea of doing Beauty And The Beast. I was ecstatic as I put me shoulder to me boss's office door and ram-raided me way in.

There sat Elizabeth Jones (der management) in her finest Elizabethan regalia, presiding over a meeting with the Board of Governors - every single one of them fast asleep. Liz was the first to wake and greeted me with "and who pray are you"? "I'm yer Dame your Majesty, you know, Top Banana," I replied. "But you're bald" she shrieked. "Only in the winter. I like to be the first to hear snowflakes falling on me head!"

I gained the necessary authority to do Beauty And The Beast. I found a pencil, and on the back of me P45 I sat down to write it. I didn't get past the first sentence when the phone rang. It was the Walt Disney Studio in Hollywood. They threatened to sue moi if I used any material from their cartoon film. I muffled the receiver as I stretched over to the video and switched off their Beauty And The Beast cartoon. "Now listen here Hollywood, I am a mature woman of unknown age and I'm not in the habit of watching cartoons. I shall write me own story and I'll sue you if you nick any of me ideas!"

I slammed the phone down and went into instant manic-depressive mode as I quickly realised that the original fairy story did not have a plot large enough to sustain over two hours of entertainment.

I sweated and toiled, and after a gruelling ten minutes I had a completed script with eight original songs. The flimsy original plot of a handsome prince changing into a beast and then becoming a handsome prince once again, I had managed to include.

I also added a sub-plot that Shakespeare or Ibsen would have been proud of - a villain destined to rule the world by owning the only television set on earth and turning everyone into couch potatoes! But if all you come to a pantomime for is the plot, then you have missed the whole point of the exercise. A good clean, smut-free laugh is what it's all about.

Whatever the contrast of pantomimes gone by, pantomimes of today should be better than those of yesterday - they have a longer tradition to draw upon. How come the vast majority are not?

Well, this old Dame has a plausible explanation for this sad decline in our unique heritage. The first job a young actor will have in his or her professional life is probably in panto. He will just have completed three years of hard slog at a drama college, where he will have been taught precisely nothing about performing in pantomime. Equally, young directors are not trained in the medium, and far too many of them have no passion for it.

Every day I thank my lucky stars that at the Theatre Royal every man, woman and hobbledehoy who works there pours their heart and soul into our annual 'rubbish'.

What little I know today I grasped from watching or working with the likes of Nat Jackly, Ted Gatty and Tom Mennard. Not many of me Babbies will know these people, but they were all expert exponents of the art of pantomime.

15/01/99

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.