Paul Hartley and Jane Deane talk to Steve Pratt about becoming the comedy stars of Durham Gala Theatre’s pantomimes.

JANE Deane blames it on Cannon and Ball. One of the first pantomimes she saw at Manchester Palace Theatre featured the comedy double act. “They were so funny and I remember thinking I want to do that for a living,” she says.

If they inspired her to go on stage, her pantomime partner Paul Hartley had a different experience that could have put him off performing.

As a sixth-form pupil he began doing stand-up and one night he and another lad took up the mic at the Cumberland Arms in Newcastle. The other chap was Ross Noble. “I came on and thought I was doing very well.

Then he came on as a 16-year-old, did a few jokes and brought the house down,” recalls Hartley.

In the event it didn’t stop him pursuing a showbiz career, first as a Pontins bluecoat in Blackpool, then doing stand-up comedy in pubs and comedy clubs in the North-East and finally drama school.

Hartley and Deane now find themselves as the resident comedy pairing in the annual pantomime at Durham Gala Theatre. This year, they’re Jack and Jill in Jack And The Beanstalk.

“We aren’t a double act, but we work well together and tend to do a lot of the comedy routines together,”

says Hartley who has appeared in all nine of the Gala’s pantos. Deane has been in there for the last four years.

“It’s great fun, it’s my favourite part of the year doing panto,” says Deane, whom young audiences will be seeing as Dee, the unicycling delivery lady in Justin Fletcher’s new CBeebies show Justin’s House, which begins on Saturday.

Cannon and Ball inspired her to go on stage, but it was David Jason – or rather the show in which he was making a rare panto appearance – that left a lasting impression on Hartley. “I just remember screaming at the guy on stage because they were throwing bags of crisps out and felt that my world would come to an end if I didn’t get one,” he recalls.

This led him to an incident with a bra with three cups which he was determined, one Gala panto, to hurl into the balcony. Alas, it stuck on a lighting bar and had to be retrieved for fear of becoming a fire hazard.

Doing a Gala panto is a favourite part of the year, not least because he gets to spend eight weeks at home with the family instead of being on the road. A recent tour with Drama Train, for instance, took him to Texas, Russia and Norway.

“I think we’ve created something incredibly special in the Gala pantomime,”

he says. “We have built audiences year on year. I’m not famous in the slightest, but I was in Asda and someone said ‘you’re the panto guy’.

People come up and tell you they’ve booked their tickets again.”

The pair are hopeful that the new show will top last year’s production.

“We always think every year it’s not going to be better, but every year we surpass ourselves,” says Deane.

“You learn from what happened last year. We’ve grown into this family.

It’s a creative group and we know instantly if something will work.”

She did a lot of drama and musicals at school and with local amateur groups, then left sixth form college not knowing what she wanted to do, but decided to give acting a go and headed for drama school.

After training as “a serious thespian”, her first professional job was anything but serious – as a juggler at a Sheffield shopping centre. For the past 17 years she’s been “getting paid to act daft in shows and events for some of the UK’s top visitor attractions, entertainment companies and holiday centres”, as her biography puts it. She’s been a circus clown, done 11 seasons in panto and presented on TV.

When she saw an advertisement for performers for the Gala panto, she recognised the name of writer-director Simon Stallworthy as the leader of the youth theatre in Bolton she attended in the Eighties. He was among those who inspired her to act.

She sees shopping centres and the like as great training grounds for performers to learn how to work with an audience and get the comedy right.

Hartley learnt his craft as a Pontins bluecoat. “I saw a lot of people working in the industry at various levels and they all seemed to be having a nice lifestyle and I went to work with a smile on my face,” he says.

“I always say it would be my hobby if it wasn’t my job and I didn’t get paid for it.”

As for what Jack and Jill will get up to on stage, we’ll have to wait and see.

Hartley says last year’s slapstick decorating scene was the most fun he’s ever had on stage, so will be difficult top. “Whatever we do it will involve mess and chaos,” he adds.

• Jack And The Beanstalk also features Donald McBride as Dame Shrivell, Neil Armstrong as Fleshcreep, Jane Holman as Fairy Hazbean, Mark Stratton as Baron D’oolally and the voice of Brian Blessed as Giant Blunderboar.

• Jack And The Beanstalk: Durham Gala Thetre, Dec 1-Jan 7. Box Office: 0191-332-4041 and galadurham.co.uk