Panto Time: Behind You!

Ian 'H From Steps' Watkins as Aladdin! *

Gareth Thomas as The Genie!!

Good on the New Theatre Cardiff for bringing together two of Wales' favourite gay sons for what promises to be an unmissable night of panto magic!!!

* And deffo not the paedo from Lostprophets.

RuPaul: Drag Is Punk Rock

Fight the power!

Drag will never be accepted by the mainstream. Drag is punk rock. It mocks the mainstream. The mainstream is sceptical of drag, and rightly so: drag is making fun of it.

The Independent.

Erm...

Panto: Gag Of The Year

“I need some buttocks on my face,” says one Ugly Sister.

“Botox, you mean?” says the other.

“I know what I said!”

From Cinderella at The New Wimbledon Theatre, as reported by Bagehot in the Economist Special Double Xmas Issue.

The fact that mums and dads across the nation will be dragging their kids along to see stuff like this is one of the few things that makes Fagburn proud to be British.

Grayson Perry: Hands Off Our Pantomime Dames!

Various newspapers are reporting that the traditional panto dame and principal boy are disappearing from the stage, supposedly because of encroaching political correctness. As a cross-dresser myself I think that's a shame; cross-dressing can be a much-needed licence for subversion.

It's an interesting symptom: the fact that on the one hand, these days, you have an awareness of gender dysphoria and transsexualism and metrosexual habits, and on the other, thanks to the dead hand of commercialism, a real rigidifying in gender roles. My daughter's generation, for example, are much more fluid in their attitudes to sexuality, and yet young people these days are sold an altogether more distinct version. It's gender stereotyping: pink for girls, camouflage for boys. There's a very powerful reinforcement of gender roles from a very early age. I often say to parents: what would you rather have, a tomboy or a sissy? And for most, it's a no-brainer.

Pantomime and its cross-dressing traditions spring out of that long tradition of carnival and subversion; a time when eveything went topsy-turvy, people were able to mock their rulers, everything became anarchic. That's where it comes from. And interestingly, cross-dressing still has that potency. As a cross-dresser myself, I know it's a licence to cause mischief, and that's part of the role you take on. For many transexuals and transvestites, this is problematic: all they want to do is be taken seriously in the opposite role. They don't want the fact that it brings with it another kind of comedic, anarchic presence, that someone like Dame Edna exploits to the full...

Grayson Perry talking to Guardian Online.

John Barrowman: Saucy Asides

TELLY hunk John Barrowman has launched a furious attack on “miserable” critics of his naughty panto patter.

The Scots-born Torchwood and Doctor Who star hit back after his cheeky on-stage double entendres were branded “smutty”.

Defiant Barrowman, 46, said: “People like that are just miserable bastards. They need to get over it.

“Or just don’t come back — we don’t need you.”

The US-based star lashed out after coming under fire from fellow festive show favourites and a disgruntled fan.

Orville the Duck ventriloquist Keith Harris, 65, insisted: “Panto is for kids but they don’t get smutty jokes made by people like John Barrowman.”

Veteran telly comic Jim Davidson, 59, added: “Panto’s a chance to be funny without being filthy.” 

But the actor was unrepentant — and promised more saucy asides at this year’s production of Dick McWhittington with The Krankies at Glasgow’s Clyde Auditorium.

He said: “These jokes go right over the crossbar of the kids, while all the adults sit there chuckling.

“The only reason kids laugh is they see their parents laughing away.

“That’s just old school panto and The Krankies are brilliant at delivering that sort of stuff.”

But John — who married long-term partner Scott Gill in California in the summer — admits he did receive one complaint during last year’s Jack And The Beanstalk run.

He said: “We had a letter saying I was making gay references and was being crude.

“I find it strange they didn’t complain about jokes about one of the girl’s boobs.”

The Sun - Scotch edition only. 

Fagburn recalls seeing that grand pantomime dame, John Inman, on TV once saying pantomime innuendo was "self-cleaning jokes".
Rather well put, I thought.

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.

Ann Widdecombe: In Praise Of Man-Boy Love

"I recently watched the old black-and-white movie How Green Was My Valley, which I had not seen in years. It was not the scenes of pit disasters, poverty and paralysis which lingered with me afterwards but instead one which would have appeared in no way extraordinary when the film was first released: the preacher takes a young boy on a walk, sits with him under a tree on a spot overlooking the valley, puts his arm round him and tries to give him some philosophy for coping with life’s twists and turns. It is an innocent, avuncular moment.
"Today every vicar, priest, teacher and youth worker is warned against such companionship, however innocent. To be deliberately alone with a child at all would give rise to hysterical or busybody reactions let alone to be found in isolated surroundings with an arm around the lad’s shoulders. Yet such relationships between the generations are natural and the overwhelming majority of them conceal no dark agenda..."

Ann Widdecombe, The Daily Express

• Ms Widdecombe will be appearing in panto later this year - Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs at The Orchard Theatre, Dartford.

The Sun: When Celebs Attack!!!

It's all been kicking off in Sunland again!
'DALE 'gay hater' in rant at student'
"EMMERDALE'S Adam Thomas apologised yesterday for making a "queer" jibe at a gay student."
I have no idea who he is either, but judging from his photo "gay hater" Dale looks a bit "gay".
Anyway... "Thomas, 23, snapped after Ricky Platts, 22, approached him in a McDonald's.
Ricky - who is openly gay - went up to say hello after he spotted the actor having a meal there."
"But he says he was stunned when Thomas replied: "Yeah, what about it gay boy?"
Ricky claimed Thomas then started "hopping up and down like a madman" and calling him and a pal - who was in drag - "queers".
Ricky was so shit scared he took out his mobile phone and filmed all this, his misery having been compounded by the fact that Adam Thomas plays a friend of that gay in Emmerdale!
Anyway, Adam Thomas has said he's sorry, so I hope we'll hear no more of this.
'Fan sobs at Boy George's foul rant'
"FOUL-MOUTHED Boy George left a woman in tears after tipping a drink over her because she was chatting during his act at a charity gig."
Luckily someone filmed that on their mobile, too - don't you just love the modern world?
There's a link to a shaky video of it on The Sun's site - and I have to say I can't say I blame George.
And finally... Jim Davidson is interviewed about his next panto.
Although thankfully this reactionary shitbag's celebrity ranking is so low they only put it in The Scottish Sun.
'COMIC Jim Davidson has been branded a right-wing, homophobic racist - surely he can't be that bigoted?''
All together now: Oh yes he is!
Poor Jim hasn't been on the tellybox since 2007 when he called Brian Dowling a "shirtlifter" on Hell's Kitchen.
The case for the defence, Jim? "And anyway, I've been out for dinner with Brian Dowling since that incident.
"Would I have done that if I REALLY was homophobic?"
He's also put famousgaycouple "Colin and Justin" in his new panto.
So there'll obviously be no jokes about them being poofs, there then.
I - literally - cannot fucking wait.