As dame things should go wrong, you need to go off piste in order to react to and interact with the audience. My entrance in Aladdin involved me flouncing on. One evening I came on and my head dress and wig came off - the audience loved it and I made the most of it.

Personally, I couldn’t cope with heels and found that a wearing a ball gown-style skirt may have looked the part, but cleared all the props on a very small stage. 

I bumped into Jacqui (Lewis) in the Co-op, not having seen her for years. She said “we’re struggling to find men wanting to be in the pantomime and we need an ugly sister, so I thought of you (flattered or what!)…what do you reckon?”

For me the key thing is the trust in the rest of the Players. Without their professionalism, enthusiasm (dedication!), experience and direction, the only other way of getting me into a dress would have been a stag party in Amsterdam…. and fortunately INTERPOL now have bigger fish to fry which leaves me free to ply my trade in and around Cumnor! I thought I would hate it but I I absolutely love it and find myself wanting to carve out a better and better character.

The build-up from rehearsals was strange to say the least…especially going shopping for ladies under-garments that I could squeeze into and finding some very strange web sites where size 11 heels seemed commonplace.

The delight of playing a Dame for me was that I was so divorced from my real-life persona that it considerably emboldened me in my interactions with the audience. The characters I played meant that I could become totally outrageous rather than just a little provocative. I do remember asking all the men in the audience to stand up for a song - and asking the one, very staid, male still seated whether he was trying to tell us something.

In Alice I did accidentally pop the balloon baby…a sadly deflating experience for the poor child.