Fire up the boiled-sweet deflector shield and scream at your agent that you will walk if Linda Lusardi’s getting more than you: panto season is upon us.
As always, Lost in Showbiz likes to offer a snapshot of where celeb panto stars are at, both geographically and psychologically. We open with Katie Price, who has stopped holding out for the princess offers and accepted her manifest pantomimic destiny. Her panto debut as the Wicked Fairy in Sleeping Beauty will duly be delighting audiences as of Friday night’s opening. “The people of Woking better watch out,” she recently declared, “as I’m coming to getcha.”
Merry Christmas, Woking.
But what of erstwhile members of the Price repertory company? The first Mr Price, Peter Andre, has until recently been in Strictly, rendering him unavailable for the boards this year, but the second Mr Price is to be found in Aladdin in Wrexham. Not only is he granting one of his accountant’s three wishes; he is also using his performance to highlight inconsistencies in reactions to trans people. To this end, Alex has penned a blog for the Huffington Post, in which he laments the fact that audiences embrace gender fluidity in panto with dames and principal boys and so on, but have much more of a problem with it out on the street.
“How am I labelled?” he wonders. “Alex Reid? Cross dresser? Cage fighter? Actor?”
For many of you, the answer may be (e), but stay with this, because there follows a signature and much lengthier digression in which Alex harks back to his days on the front line. “Don’t get me wrong,” this begins. “As an ex-paratrooper –” dude, you were in the TA for a bit “– there is camaraderie amongst brothers. We are tough, we take the mickey out of each other endlessly for all of the above yet we stand soldier to soldier, shoulder to shoulder and we are unbreakable. We are a unit, we have earned the circle of trust and every man is equal …”
If only on every third Saturday. So please remember: he didn’t watch his buddies die face down in the mud to live in a world where you can’t wear a gold mankini to your wife’s book launch and have civilians not take you seriously.
Yet is Alex’s suggestion that panto is a utopia of LGBTQ acceptance reflected nationwide? To Blackburn next, where Eggheads star and general legend-in-his-own-daytime CJ De Mooi offers a contrapuntal view.
CJ is playing Fleshcreep in Jack and the Beanstalk, and on Thursday tweeted: “You may not enjoy the panto young man in seat 2A but shouting ‘gay c**t’ at the Dame isn’t on. I’ve already complained to the school.”
Quite so. Indeed, this poisonous child may consider himself fortunate – it was only recently that CJ was explaining that he “fully suspected” he once killed a man in Amsterdam.
This being the festive season, of course, we must end on an up, which typically involves locating David Hasselhoff and finding out what he’s been saying.
This year the Hoff is taking his Hook to Glasgow, where he is starring in Peter Pan. As is his custom, he arrived in the city in Kitt, with his talking car doubtless offering peevish backchat about being asked to also ferry his co-stars the Krankies.
You may recall that the Krankies’ media push for the 2011 festive season revealed they had been voracious wife swappers, so they are doubtless saving up something unforgettably eye-catching for next week. My hope is that they’ll claim to have gone dogging in Kitt, who spent the entire evening saying: “Oh Krankies! I really must insist … that is NOT what TURBO BOOST is for,” before tear-gassing a Cathkin Braes car park in a fit of prudery.
For now, however, we have the Hoff, who hasn’t a bad word to say about the Krankies (of course), and who recently let the Daily Record in on the sorts of RSI you get in his line of work. “I have a sore leg from jumping in and out of cars and running along the beach,” he disclosed, before adding that the show would, of course, be going on.
We won’t say “break a leg”, in the circs. But the best of festive good luck to the Hoff – and to our panto celebs, one and all.
