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.

Kenny Everett: Best Possible Taste

This starts on BBC Four tonight.
But you probably knew that.
Is there a single dead British "funnyman" BBC4 hasn't made a "tears of a clown" biopic about?
They're normally quite good, though I'm a bit wary of these dramas that centre on how good someone's impression is.
I was such a big fan of the Kenny Everett Video Show when I was a kid, and seriously didn't twig he was gay for years.
Funny.
"Roll VT!" etc etc.

PS There's quite a lot of Kenny Everett archive TV and radio shows on BBC iPlayer at the mo.
'Kenny Everett - By The Women in His Life' Radio Times.
Seems that many journalists think a gay man getting on very well with women is odd, rather than the norm - here's "TV comic's best friend Cleo Rocos" in the Mirror.
Oh, and RT's also done on an online character guide with video clips.