Last updated at 8:29 AM on 30th December 2011
When Strictly judge Craig Revel Horwood invited Ann Widdecombe to join him in panto, the former Tory MP jumped at the chance.
Here, Ann, who plays the Widdy-In-Waiting, maid to Craig’s Wicked Witch in Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, reveals all . . .
Little and large: Ann with co-star and Strictly Come Dancing judge Craig Revel Horwood
November 2011
Craig assures me we’ll be hilarious. We make an odd couple, but it will be fun. Besides, if I don’t enjoy it, at the end of the run I can just say, ‘It’s behind me!’
The script has arrived and I read it closely, trying to spot all the double entendres. There’s the usual clause in my contract: ‘A. W. will not speak or act in any way which she considers immodest or indecent’, but there doesn’t seem to be anything too awful. Note that I have to dress as a maid at one point.
Tell agent sternly I wish to be more Mrs Danvers than saucy parlour maid.
Line-learning punctuated by fortnight at TV studios recording three quiz shows a day for new series called Cleverdicks for Sky Atlantic. Emerge with encyclopedic general knowledge but can recall nothing of script beyond existence of seven dwarves. Dash home to Devon to pack for the five-week panto stint.
November 28
Box office takings were a record and the show’s run has been extended for a week
Begin week of rehearsals at church hall on London housing estate. Relief to find everyone — Craig included — are reading from the script for the first three days. Like me, they are learning on the job.
Begin to make small amendments to script, adding my own jokes. There’s a line where Craig says, ‘I wish you to retire’. I’m supposed to respond, ‘You’re not the only one’, but I amend it to, ‘Yes, that’s what David Cameron said’. Gets a huge laugh in rehearsals.
Nobody seems perturbed by my complete failure to co-ordinate music and movement. Two dancers kindly pick me up when I am on the floor, dizzy from Craig’s spin-drop. It may not be Hamlet, but it still feels like a terrible error if I get something wrong.
December 5
Move to theatre in Dartford, venue for the show. Professional actors are magnanimous about having a complete — and often bungling — amateur in their midst. Here am I, emblazoned on all the posters alongside Craig, yet I don’t have a clue about what I’m doing. But this isn’t politics. Nobody is out to resent or criticise: they just want an enjoyable show.
We’re working with children from the local dance school who play the dwarves and animals. It’s both a delight and an anxiety. The children wear masks and recorded adult voices deliver their lines. So the adults’ timing has to be spot-on.
December 8
First dress rehearsal. Have excruciating toothache but concentrate so hard that I obliterate the pain. In costume I’m more like a cross between Mrs Bridges of Upstairs, Downstairs and Hattie Jacques than Mrs Danvers. Quick changes are a challenge.
My wig comes adrift in the first dance, taking with it microphone and hat, and I’m nearly mown down by the dwarves’ cottage when it is wheeled out during a scene change.
Reassuringly, everyone else makes mistakes too. Lines are forgotten, people come in at the wrong moment. Hilariously, the magic mirror — Len Goodman’s face projected on to a screen — also fails.
Craig finds himself addressing a blank screen.
Craig makes a very convincing woman. When my youngest godson Billy, 11, sees him in Wicked Witch regalia he can’t believe the transformation.
December 9
Knuckling down: Ann brushes up her lines using an iPad
First matinee. Totally convinced I’ll forget something but miraculously everything comes together in a swirling mass of colour, song and music. ‘Are you scared?’ I ask the dwarves as we stand behind the scenes. ‘Yes,’ they chorus behind their masks, ‘break a leg!’
Two performances today, but I can’t pretend it’s remotely tiring. All-night sittings in the Commons and reading my red boxes until the early hours were far worse. What am I doing now? Sitting in my dressing room in a wig and make-up and making a few forays on to the stage. What’s exhausting about that?
Opening night. The kids laugh at the slapstick. It’s a joy to hear them. It’s easy to provoke fits of giggles in children, but the real challenge is to make grown-ups laugh. So I’m pleased that the political jokes are going down a storm. They love it when Craig tells me to find something disgusting to do, and I reply: ‘Right, I’ll go and join the Lib Dems.’
My old friend George Stack, the Archbishop of Cardiff, comes to see the show with a party of ten or so. He has to leave immediately but the rest of the party crams into my dressing room, then goes back for a drink to the hotel where I’m staying for the run.
We’re having such a good time that everyone misses the last train home and has to take taxis back to London.
December 10
No Saturday shows as Craig is still doing Strictly, so I speak at a Conservative function. All anyone talks about is Strictly and panto.
December 11
One of the professional actors stumbles briefly over a line but recovers brilliantly. He tells me: ‘I was put off by the audience’s reaction.’ In Parliament I always had an interactive audience heckling and distracting me. That’s why I feel quite at home in panto.
Civic Night: The Mayor and councillors are here along with every Conservative in Kent, it seems. A roar of laughter as I enter, doing a staggering dance, and when Craig dispatches me to clean up the palace and I respond with, ‘It’s Hard Labour — like Harriet Harman,’ there are cheers. ‘They loved you!’ says Craig after the show. My character is very forthright, belligerent and ancient. I’m hardly acting at all!
December 12
I don’t have a special diet. I’m making kids laugh, not running a marathon. This morning breakfast was bacon, egg, baked beans. If I fancy it I’ll have smoked salmon and scrambled egg or toast and fruit. I don’t eat lunch; I’ve learned to limit eating between shows. Yesterday I had chips after the matinee.
When Craig did the spin drop that sends me swirling across the stage that evening I feared the chips might make a re-appearance.
So now I eat in my hotel room about 10.30pm. We do 12 shows a week and we’ll have Christmas Day off. Isn’t that big of them? By midnight I’m asleep — I’ll sleep like a top until 7am.
December 13
Text from Anton asking how everything is going. I phone him and his only advice is: ‘Enjoy yourself’. Craig is delighted with the show.
He isn’t the curmudgeon he pretends to be on Strictly. He’s humorous, generous and enjoys making people laugh. We inhabit totally different worlds but we share a sense of humour. We’re great friends.
He commutes to London each night. The only other actor staying in my hotel is Nick Weir, Muddles the court jester. We don’t socialise every night, but like any group of work colleagues, occasionally have a drink.
December 16
Bobby Barnes, my old constituency chairman comes with a party of 14 and loves the show — particularly the political jokes.
December 17
Craig is judging the Strictly final tonight, so still no Saturday shows. After Friday’s evening performance I whizz home to Devon. Arrive 2am. Arrange to be driven as my biggest fear is a sudden snowstorm that will halt trains and leave me stranded on Dartmoor. I don’t have a stand-in. Who else could play Widdy?
I revel in the view over moors to the sea from my window. At Dartford I just see the car park. But I’m enjoying my interlude in Luvvyland.
Return to Dartford late evening, unfortunately missing the Strictly final, but Craig tells me who won. I was rooting for Chelsee Healey. First I voted for Anton until he and Nancy went out, then Lulu, then Anita (Dobson).
Nancy? She’s as mad as a ferret. And her arrogance! She thinks she’s the most famous person in Italy after Sophia Loren. (Bad luck Pavarotti and Da Vinci). Anton’s ever-discreet, but he must think he always gets the lunatics.
Getting ready: Ann’s dresser Ceris helps her on with a ginger wig
December 19
Day free as Craig has now finished Strictly and we’re performing on Saturday. Go to House of Commons and buy Christmas presents — mints and shortbread — for the Seven Dwarves, plus stationery for all the other kids who are dancing.
December 20
Between shows wrapped Christmas presents for all the children in the show. Molly, six, is the youngest of the 30 performers.
People stop me for autographs all the time. I feel as if I’ve had my photo taken with half the population of Dartford. I’d certainly never refuse. It started with Strictly. I take it as a compliment. My favourite comment? The little girl who said, ‘I want the granny to win.’ I’d love it if all the kids in the audience thought of me as ‘the granny’.
Between matinees and evening shows I stay in my dressing room. I read or write a few paragraphs of my autobiography.
I’m reading Craig’s autobiography. My Mother Superior would have had a fit at the risque bits and I admit to feeling a bit faint at times, but it was a gift from him so I must read it. I’ve found we’ve something in common: we were both Navy brats and both posted to Portsmouth, 20 years apart! We were also both somnambulists.
On a free day, Ann visited Battersea Dogs & Cats home and named two cats Craig and Anton
December 21
By 10am I’m in my dressing room. Ceris, my dresser, does my wig. She puts my hair in pin-curls then on goes the ginger monstrosity. It takes 15 minutes. I do my own make-up. I’ve had a lesson from a professional, but I’m still not remotely good at it. The trick is: overdo it.
I wear a lot of Chanel (my own) and then some gunk on my lips and awful red/brown blusher.
I finish with a quick spray of Chanel No5. All done in ten minutes. Craig spends hours perfecting his face. He’s too polite to comment on my efforts.
I have three costume changes. I begin in black and gold then wear two of my Strictly dresses: the yellow one I call ‘Big Bird’ and a blue one for the finale. Some of the cast change in the wings. I don’t. The rule is: ‘Widdy doesn’t change in front of anyone except her dresser.’
December 23
Christmas is a big deal for me. I send 350 cards — I wrote them in Devon before I left and bought and wrapped all my presents. Luckily I’ve got a very good secretary, so if I’ve missed anyone she’ll remind me. My housekeeper is keeping an eye on my house.
When I was an MP I always spent Christmas Day visiting hospitals and fire stations. Boxing Day became Christmas Day and the family would visit. ‘What fun it will be to have Christmas back!’ I thought after I retired.’
But, of course, I haven’t. I’m performing Christmas Eve and Boxing Day, so won’t see my great nephews and nieces this year. My sister-in-law rang to say: ‘Shall we bring them to the show?’” The oldest is seven and they live in the West Country. I wouldn’t dream of it. I said: ‘If it’s a success I’ll be doing another panto next year, possibly nearer to you.’
Christmas Eve
All the great nephews and nieces already have their presents from Great Aunt Ann. Truthfully, I’m not bereft I won’t see them as I know they’ll come down to Devon as soon as the weather perks up. To church after the show for Midnight Mass.
Christmas Day
Spent with an old friend Evelyn Lechene — I met her through Women and Families For Defence in the Eighties — at her home in Gravesend, near Dartford. A single day of absolute relaxation. Bliss!
Boxing Day
Hi-ho, hi-ho, it’s back to work I go! Actually I can’t wait to get back to the smell of the greasepaint; the roar of the crowd.
n Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs is at the Orchard Theatre, Dartford (01322 220 000; orchardtheatre.co.uk)
Continue reading here:
Ann Widdecombe opens her panto diary