How to get into the mood to be the panto dame...

“I started daming back in 2016 and I've done it on and off,” Alex says. “I just wanted to get into it. I love panto and I'm a comedian and it was like putting the two together. I've never done it before but once I got into it I just loved it and the fabulous dresses and the fabulous make-up.

“I know a lot of dames are gay but I'm a straight dame and I think for me the fun is really tapping into the manliness and the butchness. The joke is that you are a dame but you are actually a man in a dress and every scene I try to pick a moment and say ‘Right stand back, Jack!’ (in a big deep manly voice). It reminds everyone in the theatre that this is a female character but I am actually a man in a dress.

“But my approach to being a dame is to have a very very, camp playlist. I listen to things like Girls Just Want To Have Fun and I'm Coming Out and Walking On Sunshine and I find that it gets me into the mood. There needs to be a campness to playing a dame. You have got to be camp. My godfather is gay and he has just got such incredible comedy timing. My mum was a single mum so I was very influenced by him and I think I learned such a lot from him.

“You have got to be saucy as the dame and you can push things a little bit but I think the dame works best when you do a lot with suggestion rather than being outright rude. I think you can get away with more with the suggestion of flirting with the man in the front row rather than downright flirting with him, and that's the funny thing. At the end of the show you would think that it would be the children that really want to meet the dame but it's actually the dads. I think it's their guilty pleasure. It’s just so lovely that everyone has such a great time.”

For Alex, panto this year will be bouncing back from disappointment: “I didn't do it last year because I got Covid and I had to pull out. It was really, really heartbreaking but I just couldn't do it to the rest of the cast. I was all ready to go and it was up here in the north-east in County Durham (where he lives) but I just called the director and said I'm so sorry and that I had Covid. And the director was just so happy with my professionalism that I realised I couldn't do it. Fortunately they managed to get another dame but it was really, really disappointing.”