Instead of schmoozing at City parties, I’m Sarah the Cook in a Yorkshire panto

Last Christmas I offered you a cruel satire about a boardroom big-shot whose career went so awry that he ended up as a pantomime dame. So perhaps there’s justice in the fact that this year, that’s what’s happened to me. Instead of schmoozing the City’s festive party round, I’m cross–dressing nightly on a Yorkshire stage as Sarah the Cook in Dick Whittington and His Cat.

The original Whittington, four times Lord Mayor of London between 1397 and 1419, was a mercer who exported English cloth across the North Sea, importing silks and velvets in return. But in panto, Dick and his crew turn their backs on our European partners and sail in search of new trade deals ‘on stormy seas where rough winds blow/ to the sandy shore of Moroc-co!’ And when the Good Ship Lollipop sinks, there isn’t even time to ad-lib ‘Talk about a hard Brexit…’ before ‘Women and cooks first!’

Of course every panto has a happy ending.