Page 94 - Phonebox Magazine November 2010

David Pibworth Column
It’s Christmasssss!
I’M IN PANTOMIME in Northampton this year. I’m Widow Twanky in ‘Aladdin’ to be precise. The pop singer Chesney Hawkes is playing Aladdin and ex Hollyoaks actress Melissa Walton is playing the princess. It’s at The Deco, which is the old ABC cinema for those of you old enough to remember it. It used to be a cinema and also a music venue and bands such as The Beatles played there in the 1960’s. Anyway it closed for a few years and was then bought by ‘The Jesus Army’, who have their church services in it and have refurbished it as a theatre and they let it out to the pantomime company for a month. I went round there a couple of Saturdays ago for a photo shoot and not quite knowing where we were to meet, I stood about outside the stage door looking a bit lost.
Now, what I didn’t know was that The Jesus Army have some kind of soup kitchen around the back where, to their great credit, they give away cups of tea and breakfast to those in need. I was approached by a scruffy and unshaven, but very friendly, man, who looked me up and down and then told me where I could get my free breakfast. My wife has been saying for some time that I often don’t look my best when I go out, and I concede now that she may have a point. On the plus side I now know where I can get breakfast.
Of course in pantomime as Widow Twanky I’ll be wearing a selection of extremely vivid and extraordinary dresses and makeup and hair is done by an expert and so for the first time for a while I’ll have 5 weeks of being perfectly groomed and stylised every day albeit in not quite the way my wife would want to be seen out with me, but as I said to her “It’s a start.”
I have a PR man at the moment for the panto season who is trying to persuade me to look more like ‘An Actor’ when I go to things and maybe it’s time to dress slightly flamboyantly with long coats and a floppy hat, but I’m not sure about all of that. It would probably look like a mid life crisis at this point in my life, so I’m fighting it although some headway has been made by my wife who has hidden the jacket that I was wearing when I turned up to the Deco at the breakfast incident.
I was given a bit of advice by a fellow actor recently when I mentioned that I was in panto. He said that I should allow people to think that I’m gay. I thought about it and said, “Well, do you think it would further my career, perhaps allowing me to be considered by the Royal Shakespeare Company, or more high profile period style television with high production values”. He sipped his brandy and said, “No. It just means that the leading lady and the chorus girls won’t mind you sitting in their dressing rooms while they change.” I
said, “Well, really. I mean we’re talking about family entertainment here, what a disgraceful reason, I’ve never heard the like......does it work then?”
It’s all a game isn’t it? Life in general, and certainly in the entertainment business. As I see it, in this particular line of business, we are contracted to entertain people on stage which we do. I’ve never quite got the fact that some entertainers have a wish to be taken seriously off stage. Actually I’ve yet to get why anyone wants to be taken seriously. It must be an awful pressure to be under which is one of the reasons I always carry some magic tricks about with me. If conversations turn too serious I make a handkerchief disappear or pull a pound coin out of someone’s ear and it’s amazing how things lighten up. OK, granted the Pope didn’t see the funny side, but on the whole it’s a good wheeze.
So, I’m still considering my off stage image. I have in fact got a long coat and a floppy hat but I have to tally it all up with other important factors, such as free breakfasts. Mmmmm. Yes, I’m thinking about it now. And the breakfasts are still ahead by a good 5 furlongs. Now, I wonder where my wife hid that jacket.
I’ll let you know how the panto goes. Ta ta for now.
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