‘You either are panto, or you aren’t’: Christopher Biggins on his favourite time of year

Christopher Biggins has managed to bag some of the nation’s favourite TV characters over the years: Lukewarm in Porridge and Nero in I, Claudius, to name but two. Yet there’s a good chance he wouldn’t have had a career at all if it hadn’t been for his Aunty Vi. She was ‘the most terrible snob’, he tells me. The family accent (a mishmash of northern and broad Wiltshire) troubled her, so she sent the young Biggins off for elocution lessons. His teacher was also into theatre, and saw he had potential. Her encouragement and the new accent saw him start in rep on £2 a week. He left school at 16, bitten by the bug. Fifty-five years later he’s still busy, still bitten.

It’s that time of year when Biggins comes to the fore as one of the grand dames of British pantomime. He was just 26 when he got his first role as Mother Goose at Darlington’s Civic Theatre. At the time he felt insulted — every other pantomime dame seemed ancient. But the producer saw something in him. What the young Biggins saw was big money (£1,000 a week in 1974), but as time has gone on he’s come to love pantomime. Now, he’s its loudest cheerleader.

Why does he think it’s such a national obsession? ‘It’s pure family entertainment. I have looked out into the front row and seen a woman breastfeeding her baby, next to grandmother. In the old days actors used to look down their noses at pantomime. It was “Oh God, not pantomime!” But as an actor it is fantastic. Twelve shows a week, the audience laughing. It lifts you to another planet.’

He’s had some of his best times in panto. ‘I was in Brighton co-starring with Irene Handl. She was mad as a hatter. She had a habit of barging on stage carrying her dog when it wasn’t her scene.