Panto: Nothing Like A Dame

‘I’m not the butchest thing on two legs. My idea of a dame is not in any way effeminate. I don’t like the people who do that. I don’t like the gross makeup. I think it’s clownish. And I think clowns frighten children anyway.
“I’m a man dressed as a woman who you think doesn’t really want to be dressed as a woman.
“The thing with the dame is you’ve got to make everybody in the audience comfortable. In fact it’s not the children who would be embarrassed by a dame if he was effeminate or wore really wonderful Danny La Rue-type costumes. It’s the men. They would feel uncomfortable.” 

Berwick Kaler, "Britain's longest-serving dame", in a Telegraph article on the history of the pantomime dame.

  
• Michael Grade's History Of The Pantomime Dame is on BBC Four tonight. Warning: Contains scenes of Mr Grade being turned into a dame.