Delighted to be back in Bognor Regis for panto

This year the show is Beauty and the Beast running from Wednesday, December 7-Sunday, January 1 (tickets on alexandratheatre.co.uk).

“Bognor is a fantastic place for pantomime. I've never felt so welcomed in any other place and you are just so well looked after in Bognor. The staff are fantastic and the volunteers are fantastic and everyone's making sure that you have a great time there. And the audience is great too, very generous and always keen to participate and there is always lots of laughter. Bognor is always a really special place for panto.

“This is my eighth year with Spillers pantomimes so I think it must have been 2015 or 16 when I was first in Bognor and that was Beauty and the Beast as well, but in a different role. It's great to come back to the show but this one is a totally different version. It’s a very much more modern take on the traditional tale. All the key elements are there obviously, everything that you would anticipate. But the main setting is different. It is Gaston's karaoke bar.

“I am playing Bouffant Le Quiff (the Gaston role). He is a lovable rogue. I'm the villain but I'm not completely villainous. He seems very arrogant and very pompous and he is perceived to be the village hunk and he wants Belle and because he can't get his own way he starts to become a bit conniving and a bit unpleasant, but he is certainly redeemable.

“I think this must be my 12th professional panto in all, and the only year I didn't do an actual panto on stage was the Covid year, but I did get a job as an ugly sister for Tesco's. We went into stores. We were sent out to perform with a little script and I do think people enjoyed it. We had to wear a full clear face covering but it seems the people enjoyed it and it does mean that my run of pantos wasn't broken!”

As for the pandemic generally: “All my work stopped, everything, all the teaching, all the things I do so I applied to the local supermarket and I did picking at nights, doing the orders that people had put in and eventually I became a duty manager running the store for a while. I was very pleased to get back to my normal job but I do have a huge amount of respect for everyone who works in the retail business. A lot of my colleagues in acting ended up doing something like that. Actors have to be so adaptable

“I came back to panto last year with this production in Epsom and it was such a joy and a privilege to be back. I think the pandemic really made you remember why you came into this industry in the first place. It's really lovely to make a difference to other people.

"Even though the audience had to be wearing masks, you could really feel the joy that the audience were feeling and it was just tremendous to be back with my colleagues.”