I’ll miss panto — even the heckling

HE’S behind you! Boo! Hiss! Oh yes he is! Ugh lesbians! Yes it’s the beginning of pantomime season.

Most rehearsals begin this week so I thought I’d share with you a selection of heckles I received while on stage.

The “lesbians” one was from a young lad in the stalls when I, playing the Prince, kissed the hand of my colleague, Gemma, who was playing Sleeping Beauty.

I’m not doing pantomime this year, not because of the lesbian comment you understand, more to do with the two shows a day for three months. Panto is the hardest job actors do. Most of the time we swan about film sets with tea brought to us by minions. Actually that’s not strictly true but it’s a good myth to perpetuate.

But pantomime is a continuous uphill struggle. Have you ever arrived at a freezing cold theatre at 7.30 on a winters morning to paint your face with bright red cheeks and freckles, while all around you are snuggled up round a fire watching “The Snowman” on telly?

Have you ever pulled on a pair of lycra/polyester mix stripy tights and high-heeled boots with a multi-coloured coat and hat just to perform a sword fight with someone dressed as a large rat at 9am?

Have you ever tried singing “I’m so excited” by the Pointer Sisters while skating around a stage on rollerblades at the early hour of 10?

If you have, I don’t wish to know.

So I repeat, pantomime is the hardest job actors do. We do it twice a day, once for school children who eat snacks so loudly you can’t hear yourself sing “Angels” and once for the adults who finally get the double-entendres we stuff in like sardines.

Actors tend to do the show 80 times or more over the Christmas period while hardly ever acknowledging the Christmas period itself. Days off are kept to a minimum while early starts and late finishes are par for the course.

At the end of the season actors bemoan their lack of festive social life, bemoan the weight they’ve lost, bemoan the colds and flu they’ve caught and most of all bemoan the wages, but they all turn up to rehearsal at the end of October to begin the cycle again with a smile on their face.

Who could resist the excited shouts of “Ugh lesbian!” and so forth. I’ll miss it this year.