Michael Grade's History of the Pantomime Dame

Tonight, we present for your entertainment,

the most gregarious, the most garrulous,

the most glorious creature in the history of British theatre.

Gorgeous!

150 years old, and in the rudest of health, ladies and gentlemen,

we give you the primped, the powdered, the most phantasmagorical -

the pantomime dame!

What do you think?

Very attractive woman, if I don't mind saying so myself!

The history of pantomime is as colourful

and flamboyant as the dames who eventually took centre stage.

From John Rich, who made a fortune from pantomime in the 18th century...

What a showman!

..to a contemporary and streetwise ugly sister.

-You know I'm sexy, ain't I?

-No!

But what the earliest and most modern pantomimes

have in common is a world of delightful disorder.

It's about misrule. Everything's the wrong way round all of a sudden.

And at the very centre of it all is the dame.

She is the queen of misrule,

and she's been played by the greatest comedians of stage and screen.

You've got to have eyes that can say everything,

and knees that make you laugh.

If you haven't got funny knees - forget it!

# The wonderful pantomime dame, why do you make us so laugh like you do?

# Does she remind you of old Aunty Glad?

# Or was it your nanny, or even your dad?

# Whatever the reason, we laugh just the same

# At the wonderful pantomime dame. #

As if you hadn't guessed, that was yours truly,

dressed as a woman for the first and last time, I promise!

It's funny, you put on the dress, all the make-up and the wig,

and you step out onto the stage a dame.

Not a man. Not a woman.

But a powerful character, the heart and soul of pantomime.

Go to bed!

She's motherly, flirtatious and vain.

Outrageous, anarchic,

and I love her!

Now, I can remember my first pantomime,

sitting in the wings on a bucket at Finsbury Park Empire,

watching my Aunt Kathy as principal boy.

But the thing that really captivated me - she was very good -

but the thing that really captivated me was the pantomime dame.

The comedy, the outrageous power of that character,

the communication with the audience.

Make-up time.

So what it is it about this great British institution

that still pulls in the crowds?

Done, dusted.

Why has she survived and thrived for so long?

I've come to York to meet the doyenne of modern pantomime dames.

He's a living local legend and his name is Berwick Kaler.

They queue for hours as soon as the tickets go on sale,

and he's played dame here for over 30 years.

He is indeed the first lady of modern pantomime.

For 33 years, Berwick has written the annual pantomime

and appeared as the dame.

This year he's called it The York Family Robinson.

Every year it's a fresh and topical script.

But, the first words he utters on stage are sacred.

They never change.

I utter four banal words.

If I cough before I said these four words, the audience would be aghast!

Me babbies, me bairns!

And it puts everyone at ease. The family's back together again.

-Nothing's changed.

-The family's back together.

-Have you missed us?

-Yes!

-We've missed you, I tell you.

-Have you brought your sense of humour with you?

-Yes!

Oh, You're going to need it!

He'll stand on stage and he will look the whole house

and within seconds, everybody feels he's said hello to them,

almost individually, and it's a fantastic ability to be

able to do that and just take everybody in, really quickly.

Anybody who wants to make a rush for the door,

you've got three seconds, one, two, three.

DOORS SLAM SHUT

Too late!

You're all mine, and what a show we've got for you.

Five minutes of solid entertainment crammed into six and a half hours.

All I wanted to be was a Shakespearean actor,

and I was getting these pantomimes.

When I first started here we were doing panto scripts

that had been round the country, you know...

-Stock, the stock...

-Stock pantomimes.

And, I just thought, no, this is not acceptable.

-This is just conning the public.

-No originality, no identification with the community.

-No.

-It could have been...

-Anywhere, any town.

Anywhere in the UK, anywhere in the UK.

And then the next year, the director said, "Well, why don't you just write it?"

-And you enjoy writing it?

-I love it, I love it, I love it.

-Hi, Ma! Did you want something?

-Yeah, look at these.

-Are those bills?

-No, they're mine!

The writer Max Beerbohm said that pantomime was the only art form invented by the British.

That's a slight exaggeration,

but by absorbing the theatrical conventions and traditions

of other nations, we have made it quintessentially British.

The plot is always very simple, the girl dressed as a boy,

who's the son of a man dressed as a woman.

There's a man dressed as a woman, who has a son played by a girl,

who's dressed as a boy, who falls in love with a girl who is a girl,

and they're helped out by two people dressed as an animal.

Try explaining that to our American cousins!

Big hello to the third year Shakespeare students...

..from Connecticut, America.

They have never seen a panto before

LAUGHTER

They still haven't!

LAUGHTER

This is Covent Garden, a great place to see street entertainers.

And it's piazzas like this one that saw the start of pantomime

and the pantomime dame.

Our story begins in the sixteenth century, in the streets

and marketplaces of France and Italy,

with the tradition of Commedia dell'Arte, a sort of improvised

comedies with a group of characters who are endlessly satirised.

Audiences were entranced by the comedy, the cross-dressing,

and the mayhem of Commedia and pantomime still entrances audiences,

and professors of theatre studies!

The origins of pantomime in Britain start with the importation

of Italian performers from the Commedia dell'Arte.

It's a typical structure of comedy -

young lovers being thwarted by the older generation,

having to get their way by all sorts of tricks.

And you have the famous Commedia characters,

the Harlequin, the Pantaloon, the Columbine, and those gradually

merge into a British version of the pantomime.

The performance of Commedia in mask was actually generally a half mask,

so that the mouth was free but the top of the face was

characterised in a usually very exaggerated way.

They're human and recognisable but also not quite human

and recognisable.

And today's traditional dame make-up - for example, the very high

arched eyebrows the often very white face, acts as a kind of mask.

It's extraordinary, but this is where the change starts,

just by putting on the make-up, because I find myself,

when I'm looking at myself, smiling more like a woman than a man.

There's an old saying -

"What the Lord has forgotten, we stuff with cotton."

And now I stand on the side of the stage, take a deep breath

and I hear the music and as soon as I've heard three bars of the music

# Da-da, di diddle dee-dee... #

I'm on! We're there. I'm a dame.

I think it's that level of absurdity and almost grotesque humour,

that takes us right back to Commedia dell'Arte.

And we can see the same kind of humour in this remarkable silent film.

It's called Le Pied de Mouton, and it is essentially a pantomime.

It follows the dramatic form that would have been entirely familiar

to theatre audiences in the eighteenth century.

Here are the young lovers, Harlequin and Columbine.

But there's trouble ahead.

Here comes Columbine's father to thwart their plans.

He wants Columbine to marry the rich fool, dressed as a clown.

The characters and the plot are timeless

and we know that love will conquer all.

In between there's magic and slapstick,

elements that remain to this day.

Right.

Oh, no!

Aw, what a nasty accident!

So in the eighteenth century,

pantomime is starting to acquire the elements that we recognise today.

Slapstick. And transformation scenes.

But one ingredient was missing.

# What ain't we got? We ain't got dames. #

in the eighteenth century there weren't dames as such

in the way that we'd recognise them now,

but there have always been men dressing up as women,

generally women who are much older - they're not playing young females,

they're playing the mothers.

The nurse role in Romeo and Juliet, for example,

I think is part of that comic, much more bawdy comic tradition.

This is the heart of London's theatre district.

Behind me the Royal Opera House,

just around the corner the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane,

and over in that direction is the site of the Lincoln's Inn Theatre.

Now the man who ran the theatre, actor-manager John Rich,

is the founding father of the British pantomime.

If you want to find out about John Rich, the place to come

is the Garrick Club here on the edge of Covent Garden.

It's not just a fine gentleman's club,

it also boasts one of the greatest theatrical libraries in the country.

Just the place to find out how Rich got rich.

This is an actual book kept by Rich,

and he kept an account of what he was putting on

at Lincoln's Inn Fields and later at Covent Garden,

an account of his takings, and importantly

what the opposition were putting on at Drury Lane, just round the corner.

And if we go to December the twentieth, 1723,

1723.

Here we can see The Drummer and Necromancer,

Harlequin Doctor Faustus for the first time.

And the takings - £162.

That's in one night.

And the previous night with Don Quixote

he only made £22.

So from £22 to a £162,

and every night there's a pantomime, you're in a three-figure sum.

He's really milking the cash.

And £162 is how much today, do you think?

You're looking at £200,000. a night.

If he's doing what, six performances a week, or six - he's taking six,

he's taking £1.2 million in today's spending power.

It's a phenomenal amount.

This is a goldmine, this man has struck gold,

and oil and diamonds - all in one place, with pantomime.

With pantomime.

He starts to become very successful. To what end? What was his ambition?

He wanted to build a theatre.

-But he had a theatre.

-He wanted a better theatre, he wanted the best theatre,

a bigger theatre. He wanted to blow Drury Lane out of the water.

And it's the money that he'd made from his successes

that enabled John Rich to move from the old theatre

at Lincoln's Inn Fields and build a brand new theatre at Covent Garden.

And in 1731 - and we can see him in this engraving -

Rich's Glory or his Triumphant Entry Into Covent Garden

-Oh, wow!

-And here we have Harlequin driving the chariot shouting, "Rich for ever".

-Here's John Rich in his dog costume, sitting...

-Dog costume?

Yeah - it's from earlier pantomimes where he played a dog,

and he used to cock his leg.

Wow! What a showman! What a showman!

We're only just discovering now, I think,

the kinds of important things that John Rich did

in establishing pantomime as this centrally English celebration of

the enjoyment of theatre and the kind of silliness

that you can have, as well as the serious part of it.

From John Rich to the current day,

there remain staple elements of pantomime.

There's music, dance, a dash of topical satire

and with Berwick's dying swan, some tragedy as well.

And there's another pantomime tradition that Berwick's dame embraces - wordplay.

It is one of the ingredients of pantomime.

Yes. And now I've got one here that you've written,

and I was foolish enough to be persuaded.

What part do you want?

I'll play Wishy-washy. You can do Twankey.

I'll play Wishy-washy, the accomplice.

Dad picked up this old bag in Baghdad, Dad did.

Did Dad pick up that old bag in Baghdad, did Dad?

Dad died of a deadly duodenal in Baghdad, Dad did.

-Did Dad die in Baghdad, did Dad?

-Dad did die in Baghdad, Dad did.

-Did Dad die?

-Dad did die.

-Die.

-Die.

-Die.

-Die. Did-ee eye-tye die die a-die a-die eye!

Standing ovation.

Pantomime is family-friendly, of course,

but a good dame should be nice and naughty.

Eee, This takes me back!

There is a knowing conspiracy between the dame

and the audience, who accept she's a woman played by a man.

Right, let's all get a good night's sleep!

It's all good knockabout fun...

..with endless possibilities for the double entendre.

And the mistress of the form was the brilliant Jack Tripp.

-Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello!

-Hello. I don't think I've had the pleasure.

No, and I don't think you're going to, either!

-It's you!

-It is I.

-I didn't recognise you.

-Oh, thank you!

You look marvellous. Really and truly.

You've got to see it to believe it.

Well, you'd better believe it, because you're not going to see it.

But there's that terrible old joke about double entendres, you know,

I can't stand double entendres,

if I see one in a script I just want to whip it out.

And there is that kind of element to it

-and I don't like pantomimes being rude.

-Smutty, yes.

But there is an element that children don't understand,

-that adults do.

-It has to be a double entendre, not a single.

Yeah!

What about my poor sister Annie? She's gone, you know, has my Annie,

and my poor old granny, and my sister Fanny, what am I going to do?

No Annie, no granny and no sign of my other sister at all!

Another legacy from the earliest pantomimes is topical satire.

Even Berwick writes it into his family-friendly pantomimes.

-He's staggering!

-It's as if he doesn't know which way to turn.

-He's going to the left.

-Bit like the Conservatives!

-Now he's going to the right.

-Bit like Labour!

-He's running away.

-Bit like the Liberals!

This kind of mockery and topicality can be traced right back

to the pantomime scripts of John Rich.

In 1721, Rich included verses about the South Sea Bubble,

a giant financial scandal that wiped out thousands of investors.

His verses wouldn't be out of place today.

But for the South Sea Bubble read Lehman Brothers or

the Greek debt crisis.

"Hear me weep and wail, Listen to my doleful ditty

"Mind my wretched state and pity.

"While the stocks were rising, rising,

"My fortunes were surprising.

"But now they fail, My garments at sale

"My hopes beguiled, My remnants spoiled

"And I am ruined out of measure."

Breaks your heart, doesn't it?

Topicality, satire and other wonderful pantomime conventions

have their roots here in the West End of London

at John Rich's Covent Garden, and at a rival establishment nearby.

This is the great Theatre Royal, Drury Lane,

just a stone's throw from Rich's Covent Garden.

Inside here, treading the boards,

was the great actor-manager of the day, David Garrick.

Now, Rich's vulgar entertainments were giving Garrick a problem,

stealing audiences from the serious theatre.

So he decided if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

David Garrick, the great actor-manager of his day,

the great Shakespearean, realises that John Rich is doing

so well, he's actually taking away his business,

so at Drury Lane, we find the great David Garrick admitting this,

and saying, "You know, if my audiences won't come to Hamlet

"or Lear, I must give them Harlequin."

And he does - and it's a wow!

Gyles Brandreth is a former MP and a familiar TV face.

But it's not as widely known that Gyles is a genuine

pantomime historian and passionate about the subject.

He knows the works of Garrick inside out.

David Garrick, you know, founder of the Shakespeare festival,

gets into pantomime.

And one of the shows he gives us, is Harlequin Invasion.

Topical show, this is all about General Wolfe, the Heights of Quebec and all this,

and it includes this song with which you may even be familiar.

"We still make them feel, and we still make them flee,

"and drub them at shore, as we drub them at sea, so cheer up m'lads with

"one heart let us sing, oh soldiers and sailors our statesman and King,

"hearts of oak are our ships, jolly tars are our men..."

# We always are ready, steady, boys, steady... #

"Hearts of oak..."

Which lives on today.

..which lives on today - lives on today in the navy -

but they got the whole audience singing Hearts of Oak.

Yeah, wonderful. It's all down to panto.

History of Britain, panto!

Oh, no it isn't!

That's very good!

So in the eighteenth century, pantomime has audience participation

and box office hits, but still no sign of the dame.

Don't panic!

Enter a character who would transform pantomime

and open the door for the dame.

In 1781, a three-year-old boy appeared on the stage

at Drury Lane in one of David Garrick's pantomimes.

He was to become the greatest

and the most influential figure in the whole history of the art form.

His name - Joseph Grimaldi.

The reason that Grimaldi is so important in the story of pantomime,

is that Grimaldi moves the clown centre-stage.

Until then the harlequinade had essentially been a romantic story.

-Like a fool in Shakespeare?

-Exactly.

-Just a bit player.

-A bit player, and now...

-..comic relief.

Comic relief, but now actually the funny bits become the central bits.

He walked in funny.

And they say that with a clown, with a great clown,

the two tests are the eyes, and the knees.

You've got to have eyes that can say everything,

and knees that make you laugh.

If you haven't got funny knees, forget it.

Grimaldi changed the face of pantomime

and paved the way for the pantomime dame.

It's Grimaldi also who adapts

what we think of now as the standard clown makeup,

the crying and laughing clown,

that was Grimaldi's makeup - that was his mask.

He was a sensation in everything he was in, every pantomime.

Here we have him - Grimaldi's Bang Up in the pantomime of The Golden Fish.

I mean, we are talking genius here, aren't we, by all accounts?

Yeah. And, in the pantomime of the Red Dwarf.

With his Mohican.

Wow! He must have been absolutely mesmerising, and funny.

Funny, funny, funny.

Yeah. A lunatic.

Do you think Grimaldi won popularity with the kind of

sideways look at the Regency period and a bit of satire?

The joy of these early pantomimes is that they manage to get under

the barrier when it came to the rules and regulations,

because if you were performing a straightforward play,

you had to get a licence to do so, but if it was a pantomime

that included music and pantomimic interludes,

no script was required for that, so there they are confronted

with a live audience and a live entertainer who comes on, knowing

that he can get away with anything, cos it's for one night only.

You could make political remarks. And he did so.

And he was said to be really quite sharp and observant.

If you wanted the slapstick, the visual humour - he was there.

If you wanted the song, he was there, the sentiment - he was there.

-If you wanted the sharpness, there he was.

-Amazing.

This is probably the closest we can get to see what Grimaldi was like on stage.

This is George Robey, the music hall star and pantomime dame

appearing as a clown in a silent film from 1923.

Funny face and funny knees.

And Grimaldi didn't just wear a bit of slap, he also put on a frock.

He did play comic women.

In a pantomime he famously played the part of Queen Rondabellyanna,

Rondabellyanna, you know, and dressed physically for that role.

So he was a comic dame figure.

I bet he was wonderful.

He must have been wonderful.

This is Grimaldi's grave.

He died in 1837, the year that Queen Victoria ascended the throne.

One newspaper wrote, "Grimaldi is dead - he hath left no peer.

"We fear that with him, the spirit of pantomime has disappeared."

Well, it hasn't disappeared, and his spirit is very much alive today.

It was Grimaldi who put the clown centre-stage and donned the frock.

It was Grimaldi who laid the foundation for the modern pantomime dame.

So you now get comics who are going to be central characters,

and comics see the potential in the mother-in-law figure,

of dressing up as a woman, the dame, and the dame is born.

-And flirting and...

-Flirt, and you can be every sort of...

I mean as a dame, you know, a bloke as a woman can be everything -

can be imperious, can be flirtatious, play...

-Shy, coquettish.

-And it's all larger than life.

-You're a natural - have you been...?

-I've always wanted to play the part.

Getting quite a lot of practising at home!

-Indeed, very quietly.

-We'll talk about that later!

Of all the wonderful dame characters,

there's one that stands out for me, and that's Widow Twankey.

Hold it, hold it! Oh, dear.

It's just like peeling onions, that is!

Widow Twankey is a key figure in the evolution of pantomime.

She is the very model of the modern pantomime dame.

I'm in search of the first Widow Twankey and I've come

to the archives of the Victoria and Albert Museum to find her.

After you.

Curator Cathy Hailes is my guide.

I brought you in here to show you a playbill.

You asked me when Widow Twankey first appeared,

and here on this playbill,

which is for the Strand Theatre, in 1861,

second on the bill, not just the pantomime.

A-ha. The Widow Twankay.

Twankay.

"Aladdin's mother, 'who,' to quote the Arabian Nights, 'was rather old

"and who even in her youth, had not possessed any beauty' -

"Mr James Rogers."

What's interesting, of course, is the name,

Twankay - which is the name that comes from the rather inferior tea

which people would have known about at the time, that, Twankay tea...

Widow Tetley, or...?

Yes. And here we have a photograph.

And I mean, this is wonderful because this is 1861.

-Early photography

-Early photography.

Of course they couldn't do it in theatres -

-they were doing it in studios.

-Look, and here's Widow Twankay.

There he is, Jimmy Rogers in a very modest,

quite authentically Chinese costume.

Earrings.

The eyebrows look very nicely painted on.

So, here we have not only the first portrayal of Widow Twankey,

but she also gives us evidence

of that enduring pantomime convention, the double entendre.

"My husband was a tailor but he's gone,

"he's just popped off as he was getting on...

"..while sewing on a button, husband, why?

"What made you thus pop off the hook and die?"

And so I think there's that humour of the word "pop" for a start.

You then wonder, well, where were the buttons?

Were they his fly buttons for example, which would have

been, you know - the fly would have been buttoned in this period,

so there's the kind of silliness of the sound of that language,

but there's also the sense of, maybe,

the Widow Twankey caused her husband to die

because of her excessive demands on him, and, you know,

he's just decided it's easier to give up the ghost

and pop off and die!

As Widow Twankey and other dames took centre stage,

pantomime became ever more extravagant and lavish.

It was now the family Christmas treat.

And the family wanted a spectacle they'd never forget.

Under the guiding genius of manager Augustus Harris,

nowhere did it bigger and better than Drury Lane.

He installed the latest technology, and amazingly it's still in place.

Mark Fox is taking me behind the scenes.

OK, we're coming under the stage of the Theatre Royal Drury Lane now,

and of course Drury Lane was built for spectacle -

it was famous for spectacle.

Really grand front of house, lovely place for audiences to come to,

but the managers wanted to create as spectacular productions as they can.

This was all cutting-edge technology,

this was the most expensive kit that could possibly be installed

at the time, and they're hydraulic rams, they're all operated by water,

and there are four of them, but they all work independently,

so not only could that actually lift the stage up 12 feet high,

and lower it right down to the bottom level, but because they

work independently, one could go up and the other side could go down.

All designed to get 2,300 people

sitting out there in the auditorium to go "Wow!"

The sheer ambition of these sets is breathtaking.

Used for melodramas and pantomimes,

this technology pushed special effects to new heights.

So you could sink a ship, you could have an earthquake,

you could have something rocking from side to side.

It turned the whole pantomime experience into something enormous.

It's like Sam Goldwyn said of one of his movies,

-"I want it to start with an earthquake and build up to a climax!"

-Indeed, exactly that,

and Augustus Harris would have agreed with him, wholeheartedly.

Augustus Harris spent a fortune on these pantomimes,

but he knew how to turn a profit.

I notice from some of the programmes I've seen from the period,

there are advertisements in it.

-Vital. Product placement was...

-In the show?

It wasn't just in the programmes - it would be in the show.

And you would have sets that would actually have -

you'd have a street scene or a shop,

and there would be product placement on there, you'd have Fry's Chocolate Cream,

or you'd have the gin that was being sold front-of-house.

I wonder what the critics made of this vulgarisation of the theatre.

Funnily enough, I just happen to have one that I can read to you,

so this is an excerpt from a review in The Star.

And it says, "The Drury Lane pantomime is a symbol of our nation.

"It is the biggest thing of its kind in the world.

"It is a prodigal of money, of invention,

"of splendour, of men and women, but it is without

"the sense of beauty or the restraining influence of taste.

"Only a great nation could have done such a thing.

"Only an undisciplined nation WOULD have done it".

MUSIC: God Save The Queen

The audience for a typical Victorian pantomime was probably

a cross-section of Britain - people of all shapes, ages,

sizes and classes attended.

It was the Boxing Day entertainment, and it was eagerly awaited.

So you have this example of a pantomime audience in 1852 -

"The pit was crammed to suffocation, oranges too were eaten

"with their customary eagerness and the skins flung upon the heads

"of the persons in the pit, who sought to return the courtesy.

"Stand-up fights there were, too, among the occupants of the upper regions,

"but on the whole, the audience behaved very decently for a Christmas audience."

What were they like when they were rowdy, I wonder?

Today's pantomime audiences may not get into fisticuffs,

but they share one thing in common with their Victorian counterparts.

They're attracted to the theatre to see celebs.

This is a trend started a century ago by our old friend Augustus Harris.

He found that he could bring in huge crowds by booking the most popular

music hall stars of the day.

Augustus Harris was known as old Druriolanus.

He brought Marie Lloyd into pantomime, put her

into Humpty-Dumpty and he brought Dan Leno to national prominence.

There are two names in the annals of pantomime that stand out

from the crowd, that come forward to take their bow -

Joseph Grimaldi and Dan Leno.

So, Dan Leno was a huge music hall star. He danced, he sang, he told jokes.

Nobody can quite tell you why he was the funniest man on earth -

they always come back to the eyes, and I think that must be because,

it's clear from the pictures of him that he played the whole house.

Looking, as it were, as if the world had beaten him down,

but he was still there.

So, he would come on - small, dainty, diminutive,

doing it all with the eyes, little movements, he is the put-upon woman.

He comes on playing Widow Twankey, any of the great female characters,

and it is, a housewife, checked long frock, apron, exaggerated, wig.

And if you are a pantomime dame, you know, 2013, 2014 -

rest assured, Dan Leno made you what you are.

-Do you like the frock?

-Yes!

Peacocks, Acomb branch. Buy one, get one free!

This is the free one!

Dan Leno is the Dame's Dame, revered by all who followed in his footsteps.

Among them was one of the twentieth century's great dames, Douglas Byng,

who had appeared in over thirty pantomimes.

Here's what he had to say about the great Dan Leno.

When we talk about pantomime dames as played by a man,

we immediately think of the greatest dame of all time, Dan Leno,

who started playing the dame a hundred years ago, and really,

ever since then, the dame's been played along those lines.

He was brilliant, of course.

But he really was the sort of model for all the dames since.

The story of the dame is a story of changing social attitudes.

The dame is a kind of weather vane.

But though she may blow with the wind,

there are parts of her that never, ever change.

A dame should be definitely a man.

And the audience should know he's a man.

And the kids in the audience should know he's a man.

I go on as Arthur Askey, with a hired wig,

and a hired frock and play me.

Do you think men laugh as much at the dame character as the women do?

Yes, but not - how do I put this?

If a dame makes a man uncomfortable in the audience, forget it.

-You're in trouble.

-You're really in trouble.

A dame must appeal to all age groups and every section of that audience.

The audience will accept you as a woman.

Not your day, is it, sir?

LAUGHTER

You look a bit shocked.

Is this the first time you've ever smelt Paco Rabanne on a woman?

LAUGHTER

But your attitude on stage is a feminine attitude, is it not?

-Yes, you...

-It's a point of view.

..you do not send women up, you do not do that.

You fight for women's causes, and everything you say is as a woman.

When you tell the story as a fella you do it your own way

and in your own sort of kind of casual or whatever way you tell your story.

But if you tell it as a dame,

you then have to use three movements, most important -

one is there, two is there, and three, at the tag is, there.

So you tell your story. You say, "But did you...?"

And suddenly you're playing a dame.

The right gestures, an outrageous frock, and hey presto, you're a dame.

How hard can it be?

In the 1970s, pantomime could attract the biggest names.

Stars like Richard Briers.

His hit series, The Good Life,

attracted audiences of up to 20 million in its heyday.

MIMICS JAMES CAGNEY: OK, shweethearts, nobody moves.

Then one fateful day, pantomime came calling.

Close your eyes.

GUNSHOT

Your agent rings you and says, "We've had an offer for pantomime."

You said, "That's very interesting." And then he said,

"The good news is they want you to play dame." How did you react?

Well, I mean just laughed.

The whole thing was laughter. I don't do that kind of thing.

I don't do variety.

I'm just an actor.

Stepping into what is essentially a vaudeville environment

is quite a big step, isn't it?

Yes, very much, very much, and you have to be funny.

And I mean I was with a guy called Bobby Bennett

and he said, "You know you've got to do the balloons."

I said, "I'm sorry?" He said, "The balloons, you've got to do the balloons

"and then you've gotta make them into dogs, cats."

I said, "I can't do that very well at all."

He thought, "He can't do anything. He's an idiot. What is he doing?

"He gets the most money than we do, more money than we do,

"and he's got the billing."

I thought, well, you know, you've got to be...

You're supposed to be a butch dame, you know, and I couldn't do that.

But the whole thing was very... it was a very, worried me.

-You didn't enjoy it?

-No.

Not so easy after all.

So how have the great dames of the 20th century approached the role?

How do they get the audience to love them?

When I played Mother Goose,

that's when I really started to think more about technique.

And I would stop and say, no, no. An old woman wouldn't do it that way.

An old woman wouldn't speak that way.

Or a kind old woman wouldn't do that.

Then I suppose I was getting a little bit more like my mother.

Everybody has their own way of playing it.

I play it like my mother.

She said, "Oh, well, I've got a simulated mink in the cupboard."

Or, "Your father, he stays in bed all day long on is dunnylumpoma."

Which I thought was... I get all those things, I'm not going to tell you

too many things otherwise, you know, you'll be playing dame yourself.

It got nearer and nearer and like my person of my mother.

Ah.

And so she was slightly snobbish, and so I began more and more

and more - which I am a little bit I suppose - a bit sort of,

"Hello, Mother, where are you?" And it would get more and posh.

And "Come along, dears, off to bed." So it wasn't very butch at all,

which I prefer the man to be very butch as a dame, I think it's right.

But in order to get through it you found that by, sort of playing Mum...

-Yes.

-And did people laugh?

Not a lot, but...I did my best.

Terry Scott was also a TV favourite,

starring in the 1970s sitcom Terry and June.

It says we owe £58.49.

-That's what

-they

-say.

Well, how much have they over-charged us?

12p.

LAUGHTER

-12p?

-Yes.

It's hard to believe that this dull character in a beige cardigan

and his glorious dame are one and the same.

It's the principle of the thing.

In a revealing interview in 1982,

he explained how he found the dame within.

My dame is an extension of myself.

Most people, a lot of people realise that they're male

and female inside them.

And yet my degree of femininity is higher

than a lot of real sort of aggressive butch men.

And I suppose that is why the dame comes reasonably easy to me.

LAUGHTER

Wheeee!

When they see this man being a bit of a woman, it's all right.

It releases possibly some of their feelings of, "Oh dear,

"sometimes I feel a bit womanish," without being peculiar.

The more you look at the dame, the more fascinating she gets.

It's interesting to me that the tradition of cross-dressing

-in order to make an audience laugh is very much a male preserve.

-Yes.

Why do you think that might be?

Even today, you don't laugh

if a woman gets bucket of water thrown over her.

I think it's because women are more grown up than men.

Women are not as silly as men.

Women have more gravitas than men.

And if women appear silly,

they lose their authority, and a man can be silly and fall over

and still retain a modicum of authority.

Silly men are part of our culture,

and because, in the rest of life,

men are expected to be grown up, whereas we're not, actually.

RAUNCHY STRIPPER MUSIC

Terry's Scott's strip. Pure genius.

Proof, if you need it, that there really is nothing like a dame.

Post-war, the most dazzling dames were

appearing at the London Palladium.

My dad, Leslie Grade, produced a lot of these shows and looking back now

at the cast lists, they read like a Who's Who of British entertainment.

Starting right at the beginning with Val Parnell,

I mean, they'd be headlined by Tommy Trinder, those big comedians

of the day, then you'd work through everybody. So, Bruce Forsyth,

Bernard Breslaw, the big names,

Sidney James appeared in pantomime, Peter Sellers...

Tommy Steele, Engelbert Humperdink in Robinson Crusoe

singing There Goes My Everything as the ship went down.

And the later stages it was the big Saturday night variety names, so,

Leslie Crowther, Terry Scott, Cilla Black, Cliff Richard and the Shadows.

Pantomime has always been market savvy and in the 1960s

it reached out to the growing teenage market.

Cliff and the Shadows appeared alongside dames like Terry Scott

and Arthur Askey.

You've got to move with the times and these days

with the pop singers, if you put a pop singer in as principal boy,

it must be a success, it's got to be a success with the teenagers.

Those pantomimes were big expensive productions,

so a lot of money invested in them getting the biggest stars again

to attract the biggest audience, all the television names,

they became very, very expensive

and to try and make your money back in that limited 12-week period,

in the West End, is not easy.

You also had the product placement, of course,

so I think 1976, the Cinderella, they'd just revamped

the Sugar Puffs, so the Honey Monster appeared for the first time.

I can top that - we did Cinderella one year

and we had an act from Las Vegas, an animal act, an elephant,

Tanya the Adorable Elephant,

and there was a big sign on the stage that Tanya flew to the palace on TWA.

But the biggest and most glamorous dame of this period was not

Tanya the adorable elephant, it was, of course, Danny La Rue.

Wotcha, mates!

CHEERING

# Jolly good luck to the girl who loves a soldier

# Girls, have you been there? #

Danny broke the Dan Leno mould of men in frocks.

He was a one-off, a gorgeous plumed creature, more duchess than dame.

Danny took the panto dame in a different direction.

And his costumes ended up in the V&A archives.

Now what is this you're showing us?

This is one of two...

It's not yours, is it, not one you brought from home?

No!

This is one of two frocks we've got,

of, of course the glamorous Danny la Rue.

Ah, Mother Goose. Wonderful, look at this embroidery.

Fantastic.

You've got the little goslings.

So with this frock, you've got your egg handbag.

MICHAEL LAUGHS

Beautifully done. Look, look, with a gold satin lining.

Isn't that wonderful?

What every woman wants.

And then the hat.

Now the hat's even got a surprise in it.

Whether many people, apart from those

right at the front of the stalls could have appreciated this.

There we go.

Oh, the wings move!

And the beaks.

MICHAEL LAUGHS

That's a work of art, isn't it?

All... All to get a laugh.

Here's Danny wearing it. There it is. Look, isn't that wonderful?

He was a female impersonator who made the transition to playing dame.

There are pantomime dames who didn't like what Danny la Rue did

because they just made him a beautiful woman,

and someone like Arthur Askey always said, you ought to

believe that there are trousers underneath this frock.

Danny la Rue, great female impersonator,

when he first came into pantomime, really didn't quite get

the measure of it, because he came on looking far too glamorous.

-Wanted to be glamorous.

-He needed to be glamorous, that was his calling card.

It was only when he was of riper years that he

turned into a figure who could be a successful pantomime dame.

While pantomime brought in talent from TV,

by the 1970s, TV was borrowing the pantomime dame.

Take Dick Emery's character, the charming Mandy.

Excuse me.

-Here's a charming young lady.

-Oh, thank you.

May I ask you, miss,

is there any particular day that stands out in your memory.

Oh, yes, one awful day,

when I got back home and found a burglar in my flat.

It was dreadful.

Oh, dear, did he rummage through your drawers?

LAUGHTER

I mean did he manage to lay his hands on your best bits and pieces?

LAUGHTER

Oh, you're awful, awful,

but I like you.

And two of my favourite cross-dressers are Les Dawson

and Roy Barraclough, playing Cissie and Ada.

I was just thinking you looked a trifle wan.

Well, let's face it, you know, I am at a funny age.

I wouldn't tell another living soul this, of course.

I'm approaching the change.

LAUGHTER

Approaching the change? From which direction.

LAUGHTER

The dame has come a long way

since John Rich staged the first pantomime in the 18th century.

This corner of London has seen a fantastic cast list

of harlequins, clowns, actors, all culminating, of course, in the dame.

Well she's now departed the West End stage.

The last pantomime at the Palladium was produced back in 1986.

She may have left the theatre district,

but she's alive and well in another part of the city.

This is Stratford in London's East End,

just a stone's throw from the Olympic Stadium.

I've come to the Theatre Royal, to see how pantomime looks today,

and how they manage to appeal to an audience drawn from one

of the most culturally diverse populations in the whole country.

This year they're doing Cinderella and they haven't got one dame,

they've got three.

I think what we try and do here, because of the diversity of our audience,

is take all those stock elements,

and try and keep them as relevant and as modern

as we can, and that's where we try, that's how we try and keep it fresh.

I will look the best, won't I?

AUDIENCE: No!

Oh, yes, I will!

Oh, no, you won't!

Oh, yes, I will!

Oh, no, you won't!

Who will have you, when they can have this picture

of perfection before your very eyes, with all of this, and all of this?

You know I'm sexy, ain't I?

Did you just say "Eurgh"?

-Yes!

-You know, I never liked you lot! Shut up.

The pantomime dame is significant to kind of all our audience

because she/he is anarchic.

SHE/HE YELLS

there's a grit to them, there's a passion to them,

there's raw desire,

and everyone recognises that, no matter where you're from.

And that's kind of why they will work in front of any kind of audience.

I have worked hard to get where I am today, marrying your father.

For many people in the UK, pantomime is their only experience of theatre.

And that's reflected in the numbers that come to Stratford.

More people come to our panto than anything else.

We get about over 33,000 people each year coming to it,

and it's a programme where you'll get all

the generations coming and it's one of your biggest earners too.

-Do you like my dress?

-Yes!

Do you think I should wear it tonight?

And Kerry follows another convention that harks back to

the Victorian era.

Panto sponsorship is possibly the easiest thing you can sponsor in a season.

Thank you.

And this year we were able to get a shopping centre, Gallion's Reach,

to sponsor this year's panto, and we'll build on that year on year.

Yes, I am a Gallion's Reach girl. Are you?

Oh, and coincidentally,

Gallion's Reach happen to be sponsors of this year's panto.

CAST EXCLAIM

You, you, what's your name? Buttocks,

come with us, we shall need some extra hands to carry all our purchases.

Carry your own!

Meanwhile, at York they take a different approach to

the commercial break.

Now it's Newky and Wagon Wheels time!

It's become a traditional part of the show

and a much loved one at that.

They chuck chocolate into the audience and hand out a beer.

The sponsorship for our pantomime is not financial.

We don't get a huge cheque from anybody for our pantomime

and we don't mention anybody's name because they've given us money to put the pantomime on.

They get lobbed out into the audience

and people desperately want to catch a Wagon Wheel.

It's just funny and it's a really exciting part of the panto.

And giving them Newcastle Brown Ale, is very much

something about the fact that Berwick's a Geordie in Yorkshire.

It's kind of like a gift from his home, his home region to Yorkshire.

And to that extent it doesn't ever really feel like sponsorship,

it feels as if it's just a part of the show.

It represents something that's never-changing.

It's very clear what it is to people and they love it.

And it's great fun, you laugh a lot when you come to the pantomime.

TS Eliot had this wonderful line about the security of known

relationships, and I think one of the reasons that pantomime

is this enduring British tradition is that it is part of our DNA.

It has never exported itself successfully

beyond the British Empire. It is something that we understand.

It's like bread and butter pudding.

I mean, it is something that for us, you know,

other people would think revolting, but we understand it, we know

what it's about, we understand pantomime, we know the rules.

What I've always loved about pantomime,

is the strength of the story and the moral aspect of it,

and the fact that the dame was allowed to do absolutely anything, really.

She was motherly, kind, foolish, fallible...

-Flirtatious.

-Flirtatious,

disciplined, silly...um, and strong.

A dame is outrageous, a dame never really offends anybody.

A dame should be vulgar, beautifully vulgar.

And I love the dame's vulgarity.

As a dame I think Berwick is very much a bloke in a frock.

It goes I think to the heart of what pantomime is because it's,

it's somehow or other it's about, misrule,

the notion of Twelfth Night.

Everything's the wrong way round all of a sudden.

There's a relationship to be had between him as dame

and the audience, which is very familiar,

and in the role of the dame he is allowed to have that special relationship.

I've had my name over West End theatres, and the titles,

but I would never take an 18-month contract,

because it interfered with pantomime.

Everything has revolved around, for the last 30-odd years,

around this York pantomime.

And for that, his fans are truly grateful.

Imagining the York pantomime without Berwick is something

we don't actually like to think about.

Oh, Berwick is absolutely wonderful.

He actually makes the show. I mean, we know he writes it

and he directs it, but he is just a superman.

Berwick's now in his 33rd year as dame.

Let's work this out, that's over 2,000 shows

and more than 30,000 costume changes.

Surely it's starting to lose its appeal by now.

-Do you still love it?

-Love it!

-Can't wait to get the dress on?

-Can't...

I can't, and it's not a dress.

-A frock.

-It's not a frock.

-It's a frock.

-It's not drag.

-It's a costume.

It's a costume, thank you.

Very good.

Well, if Berwick ever does retire, I might just know someone

who can step into his shoes, and his costumes.

Being transformed into a dame, however briefly, has given me

a glimpse of what makes her tick.

She's ridiculous, absurd, vain, subversive and rude.

But she's always game, and she's always warm,

and always, always, uniquely British.

Our world would be so much poorer without her.

# There is nothin' like a dame

# Nothin' in the world

# There is nothin' you can name

# That is anything like a dame... #

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