“The applause and the lovely costumes... I'm not at all shallow really!”

“I think it just means a lot of running around on stage and wearing two hats but sometimes it can be really useful to actually film a scene when you're rehearsing it and then look back at it and think ‘Oh yes, everyone else was wonderful but I was in the wrong place!’

“But I've directed quite a bit over the years. This is my third pantomime but I've done a lot of work with children’s theatre and schools productions and also a lot of experience working with younger people.”

It certainly helps give him a sense of what a pantomime has to be: “I think it's got to be engaging and I think that the characters have got to be well formed and they have got to really connect with the audience whether it's the cheeky comedy character who has got to really make people laugh or the evil character that the children all love to hiss and boo or whether it's the princess that everyone has got to fall in love with. You've just got to really connect. I do think pantos have evolved over the years. They do change with fashion. And pantos have also changed with political correctness but there is still a lot of cheeky humour. In the olden days it used to be a lot of speciality acts like jugglers and unicyclists and so on but really that's changed now and I think you've just got to offer a show that really does connect with people and is a lot of fun.”

James is looking forward to his West Sussex Christmas: “A friend of mine lives in Worthing and I will be staying with them over Christmas.”

James will be playing Sister Slumber, the nurse in the castle: “She is the matriarch. She keeps the comic in check and she looks after Sleepy Jean who is our Sleeping Beauty character. She's just got to be fun and open and up for a laugh and to like the fellas! She just keeps it moving.

"She keeps it high-paced and I think with three shows in a day I'm going to be losing a few pounds! This is my second dame dame role. Last year I was an ugly sister in Leatherhead with LP Creatives. I have done four or five years with LP. I did ugly sister with them twice and I was also dame in Dick Whittington but other than that I've usually tended to play the baddies, people like Captain Hook. This is my 11th or 12th year in a row in pantomime.”

Well, apart from the pandemic, that is: ““I started working for the NHS. I worked for the blood service which was a very interesting learning curve. In my in-take into the NHS there was quite a collection of people; other people had been working for the airlines, there was a food writer and there was a trainee dentist. We were a funny bunch but the theatre pulled me back. Acting is a beautiful curse. It is a joy to do when you get to do it but a lot of time it's a very hard profession. There's something like 90 per cent of actors who are out of work at any one time. So you spend a lot of time trying to do little side jobs. But then you get pulled back by the applause and by the lovely costumes. I'm not at all shallow really!”