Viv Hardwick chats to North-East-born Phil Corbitt about joining The Chuckles Of Oz at Darlington

VETERAN TV and stage actor Phil Corbitt is revelling at the prospect of becoming a heroic character in his 15th panto performance, even if it means being stuck inside a lion costume that’s going to become as hot as the African Savannah. Becoming The Cowardly Lion in The Chuckles Of Oz at Darlington Civic Theatre, having made his name as a panto baddie, including Abanazar in last year’s Christmas show, has North Shields born Corbitt beaming about panto memories.

“My very first panto saw me employed as a dancer which people who know me would find absolutely hilarious. I was in the chorus with Guy, a villager, and John, another villager. And I was the other villager. But I was mainly just dancing and the weird thing is that the bloke who directed it was taught by my mother to do tap dancing, so he assumed I could dance. I didn’t have a clue and was thrown in at the deep end. Ever since then I’ve played baddies because I suspect they’re all saying, ‘Well we can’t give that guy a dancing job’,” says Corbitt, who was raised in Cullercoats.

The actor, who has travelled the world in stage shows and has appeared in most long-running TV series from Coronation Street and Emmerdale to Vera, recalls that his first pantomime starred Barbara Windsor and newsreader Richard Whitmore.

“Now, I’m about to have the hottest and smelliest costume in the whole of the UK over Christmas. Two shows a day in a giant fur rug, which probably can’t be put through a washing machine so it will just have to be sprayed with Fabreeze. I can see people avoiding me backstage. I think I’m going to end up with a flea collar,” jokes Corbitt.

He is looking forward to a totally new Christmas role, but suspects that it will be The Wizard of Oz story with Chuckle Brothers routines added in.

“The show does have new music. So, people expecting Somewhere Over The Rainbow and all that kind of stuff will find that’s it’s not going to be like that. There will be a few pop hits added in, but it’s The Chuckles Of Oz which means it is a different show,” says Corbitt.

He is hoping to have a song about getting “the nerve”, as Bert Lahr as Zeke/Cowardly Lion famously sings about in the 1939 film, and claims to be totally typecast as “I’m scared of everything. I particularly don’t like heights, which is something that’s hit me since I got into my 40s,” he says.

Corbitt enjoys working on the scripts supplied by Wallsend producer Michael Harrison because suggestions for additional gags are often taken on board. “It’s a collaborative process. You’ve got the script, but of course in panto anything can happen on the night. People shout things out and you’ve got to be able to think on your feet. Any lion-based joke, like something from The Lion King, will be in there,” he says.

Asked about his fitness regime as a lion, Corbitt reveals that he does like to swim in the sea at his home town of Cullercoats.

“I’m still going in because we’ve had this Indian summer and I normally swim right up to the end of October. There are some nutters in their 70s and 80s who swim every morning and take a little hammer to chip away the ice before they get in. But I also have a 16-month-old daughter (Beatrice) who will be getting me up in the morning. My wife has a proper job with normal people. So, I’ll be looking after the baby before I come down to Darlington.

“She might be a bit scared at the pantomime, but we’re going to bring her,” says the actor, who says that Beatrice has already seen him in the Live Theatre, Newcastle, production called Tyne and Alan Plater’s Close The Coalhouse Door. The actor was particularly proud of the cast in Tyne being allowed to sing Sting’s title song for his new musical The Last Ship, which opened last month on Broadway.

“We were one of the first people to perform the song in public. Did Sting give me a job, did he (whistle). I did audition for the musical because he wanted some authentic Geordies and my grandfather was head timekeeper at the Neptune Yard and my other granddad was an apprentice fitter and everything. My bones were in this show, but all the casting and production people get involved and you end up with the same sort of people in all these shows. This is not sour grapes, but it does mean you don’t get the flavour that Sting wanted in the first place,” he says.

One Geordie who did make Broadway, Phillipa Wilson with the Live Theatre cast of The Pitmen Painters, told Corbitt that she got the chance to meet Al Pacino because he was playing Shylock in The Merchant of Venice.

“He met them backstage and he said, ‘I’ve been to your part of the world and it’s absolutely beautiful’. They were thinking, ‘Oh my God, Al Pacino has been to the North-East’. And then he went, ‘Dublin was absolutely fantastic’. And they were all so starstruck that none of them had the courage or nous to say, ‘We’re not from Dublin’. So, that’s the Americans take on our accent.”

The Chuckles Of Oz runs from Saturday, December 6 to Sunday, January 11. Box office: 01325-486555 or darlingtoncivic.co.uk