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I don’t want to go to the Caribbean. Ghastly thought at Christmas time. From lunchtime Christmas Day, there will be a 2,000-piece whopper on the go in our house and the aim will be to get it finished before New Year. If I’m in a room that has a television on it’s quite hard not to get drawn into what’s going on, but that is nothing compared to the black hole traction of a jigsaw puzzle. No one is capable of leaving a jigsaw alone until it is done. People can be sniffy at first, but ultimately no one can resist. Sometimes it’s a binge that can last for days. My sister is the jigsaw champion of the world. She can knock together a 500-piecer while watching the Queen’s Speech, in less time than it takes her to eat a jar of pickled onions (fast). I lack that level of visual acuity, but I do love a puzzle. So companionable, just challenging enough, but not too exasperating. I remember the entire dregs of the Colony Room ringing on my doorbell in Covent Garden at 6 a.m. one morning early in January, and all falling silent over a Tuscan vista for many hours, until it got dark again, and they were safe to go out.
But if there’s one thing that’s better than a jigsaw, it’s a pantomime. Even when I was a teenager, and didn’t like anything there was something irresistible about pantomime. Every Christmas something good happened in the panto. In fact, it wouldn’t be Christmas without pantomime. I’ve never missed a year. I used to dream of being on the stage, then I wanted to be in the orchestra pit. I like theatres — so much nicer than real life. I remember a long uninterrupted run of Cinderellas in the late Eighties and early Nineties, often at the Bristol Hippodrome. Every year it was Cinderella.
Of course there were less celebrities around back then. We could hardly believe how lucky we were to have Isla St Clair from the Generation Game as Buttons in 1987. Gary Wilmot was sensational in the role the following year. I saw Derek Griffiths really nail the part at Poole Arts Centre in the late Seventies. He was the best Buttons I ever saw. But my mother once saw Les Dawson at Southampton and his performance has become a legendary benchmark.
I’m not even sure why I do like pantomime or if it’s any good, really, like cigarettes or television. It doesn’t really do anything useful. The jokes are cheesey, the plots are stupid. They must be a nightmare to stage, even harder to make money from. I just like them. Maybe because it’s all so silly. It’s hard to think what Newsnight Review, or The Culture Show would have to say about any of this year’s offerings, but pantomime remains incredibly popular. ‘Why is that man dressed up as a lady, Daddy?’ The more I think about it, the more unlikely it all seems. This year we have Sleeping Beauty at our local theatre. I can’t wait.
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