A beauty of a panto? Oh yes it is!

WHAT KATI DID NEXT: THAT time of year is here again; let’s head off up the Yellow Brick Road towards Rapunzel’s tower, where we’ll find Robin Hood trying to awake Sleeping Beauty.

Yes, it’s panto time and where better to start the panto season than with a trip to our own Oldham Coliseum.

One of the worst parts of doing my job is that you are inevitably friends with lots of actors, who all spend the year building up to the immense trauma that is panto.

You have no idea how much two shows a day takes it out of you, however we are not brain surgeons so we won’t complain.

Yes, all year, as auditions tend to start in June/July.

So begins the squabble to land those much-prized jobs such as Widow Twanky and Prince Charming.

Then October time, in you traipse to rehearsals — if you’re lucky three whole weeks — and at the end of that out pops a fully-rounded pantomime. All singing and very much all dancing.

All these actor friends of mine, having landed that big Christmas job, send those texts saying, “Simple Simon, so-and-so theatre, so-and-so time, be there or be….”

And inevitably one has to text back, “Yes I would love to come and see you be Simple Simon at so-and-so theatre, so-and-so time..” etc.

Which means you have practically written in stone your attendance to a really long show in a too-hot theatre, always full of screaming children.

And if you do not respond to the text or even worse, do not turn up, you are crossed off the friendship list, and by heavens you don’t know when that actor might get their big break next to George Clooney and offer up your name as his new love interest in his next best thing.

I digress. We were at Oldham’s pantomime, “Sleeping Beauty”, seeing some friends who were in the show on Saturday night and I have not enjoyed a piece of theatre so much in ages.

It was fantastic, the cast, the costumes, the dancing, the music. The kids loved it, we loved it and I tell you what, we will be going again. It was brilliant. Go and see it folks, it really is a fabulous night out!

Thank goodness for this time of year, eh?