I was born to be a pantomime Dame (oh yes I was!)

‘Flamenco, lambada/ But hip hop is harder/ We moonwalk the foxtrot/ Then polka the salsa…’ I’m sure you know those lines from the Spice Girls’ anthem ‘Spice Up Your Life’, which happens to be the biggest song-and-dance number in this year’s Jack and the Beanstalk pantomime at Helmsley Arts Centre in North Yorkshire. It’s also a spotlight moment for the Dame, who’s required to wiggle extravagantly downstage then pirouette for the next line — ‘Shake it, shake it, shake it’ — and do just that. I’m told it’s called twerking. And yes, the Dame is me, your veteran weekly business columnist.

How did I get here? You may well ask. I’m reminded of a different line, from an interview long ago with a lordly tycoon who had risen from humble origins to wealth and influence: ‘I am now what I always imagined myself to be.’ Well, I can tell you this: I never in my wildest dreams imagined myself cross-dressed and camping it up night after night in the persona of a fright-wigged nymphomaniac.