Funny route to fame

TIM Stedman jokes that he always gets to play “the intellectural heavyweight of the piece”. The names of his characters say otherwise: Silly Billy, Simple Simon, Muddles.

There have been others over the past decade at Harrogate Theatre – Billy Redcap, Jack, Pickles, Buttons and this year Wishee Washee again – but they all have one thing in common.

A lack of brain power. Oodles of likrability but not two brain cells to rub together.

Time flies when you’re enjoying yourself and Stedman can hardly believe that Aladdin marks his tenth appearance in panto at the theatre. “It feels like a couple of years,” says the actor now firmly established with audiences as a popular part of the annual show.

He prefers not to name a favourite panto, but a favourite moment from ten years of being a man behaving sillyly. “I remember when the seven dwarfs came on from the back of the theatre. You could hear them coming in and I thought for kids in the audience it must have been amazing,” he says.

Having worked with Harrogate’s thenartistic director Rob Swain in Stoke, Stedman wrote and asked to audition.

He’d only ever done panto once before, as Brains (“another intellectual”) in Dick Whittington.

He came to Yorkshire to play Silly Billy in Sleeping Beauty in 2000 and the part of the lovable but dopey clown has been his ever since. The appeal is that the role is the closest to playing – as in playing about – you can get and playing “is essentially what acting is about”, he says.

“When they say, ‘would you like to come back?’, I always hope it’s for the same part. Sometimes you think you’d like to play Dame one day but I have so much fun in all the scenes I do.

“You end up getting all the nice juicy fun bits. The big part is the Dame and a character actor always wants to play the baddie, but there’s something wonderful about having 500 people laugh at you.

Ego aside, it’s a great Christmas present.”

By now, the writers must be visualising him when they’re writing the script. “I suppose so,” he concedes.

“I basically read it and twist lines around. I’m a great one for cutting lines.

I don’t think there’s any point in having too much to say.”

HARROGATE audiences are, he reckons, usually very well behaved with perhaps less heckling than some other theatres. But that means they don’t miss any of the punchlines.

“They cover most ages. People feel very safe in bringing young and old to see a panto that’s not going to have anything naughty or blue. Some might, from other theatre, argue that we’re a bit precious. But it does become part of people’s Christmas.

“It’s very important to lots of people and very easy for us when we are singing and dancing to forget we make some childrens’ Christmas – and their parents’ too.”

If you ask Stedman how he keeps going in panto, a one word answer comes back – fear. “Fear is a huge motivator in life. You’re surrounded by people who are very good and when you go on, the audience is thinking, ‘here he is, what’s he going to do this time?’. You think they liked you last year and the year before and you don’t want this to be the year they don’t like you.

“That’s why I come back because to everyone here it’s very important. We’re not just putting on a show, we’re putting on the most important show.”

He tries to keep himself free for the Harrogate panto season because he enjoys it so much. He turned down a children’s tour early in the year for fear of becoming pigeonholed but wonders if he made the right decision in the light of an “appalling acting year”.

He’s been busy doing corporate theatre and works regularly with car companies. He trains salesmen and hosts events.

Christmas will be spent in Yorkshire.

His wife is working backstage at West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds, making it easier to have Christmas together.

■ Aladdin: Harrogate Theatre: November 27-December 16. Box Office: 01423-502116 or harrogatetheatre.co.uk