Chico time arrives at Darlington as the X Factor contestant plus veteran comics The Grumbleweeds talk to Viv Hardwick about launching the town’s annual panto.

THOSE who suspect that Darlington Civic Theatre pantomine producers Qdos have rubbed one of Abanazar’s cut-price lamps for this year’s pantomime are in for a surprise. Headliner Chico, whose main claim to fame is competing in ITV1’s X Factor alongside Teesside’s Journey South, calls himself the real life Aladdin while veteran comedy act, The Grumbleweeds, are rated as The Governors of comic timing when it comes to family entertainment.

It’s early June, so where else should you be than at a pantomime launch at the olde world hotel charm of Darlington’s Walworth Castle?

Chico – who came up with his Moroccan nickname when he entered showbiz because Yousseph Slimani was considered too difficult to pronounce – sees his contract for the Civic stage as destiny.

“My good friend Joe Pasquale told me about Qdos after I said I’d done my first pantomime two years ago and wanted to do another. I sent off an email and, literally, I popped in two days later. By the next day I’d had a costume fitting, the fourth day was a photoshoot and two weeks later I’m here talking to you… that’s what you call Chico time management,”

jokes the 38-year-old.

Welsh-born Chico herded goats and worked in the fields back in Morocco until he was 13 and says of his pantomime starring role: “Aladdin is an Arabic character and his journey and my journey are not so dissimilar in that he wanted to achieve the impossible and he did. And I guess it was the same for me in X Factor. I came in, with a dream and gleam in my eye, and Aladdin was the inner me and here we are. From being my favourite character as a child to the dream of playing Aladdin is amazing.”

He claims his big-headed persona seen on X Factor back in 2005 was all an act and explains: “When I auditioned as a crooner and was humble Chico the TV wasn’t interested. I had to go back to an open audition and when I put on the bravado and big ego I got through.”

HIS ambitions to make a number one record – Chico Time knocked Madonna off the top of the charts – and ensure his family was financially secure have been achieved. Now he’s making award-winning short films with brother JC Mac, plus cameo appearances in two movies – 31 North 62 East with Craig Fairbrass and John Rhys-Davies and Whatever It Takes with Shane Richie – and is just finishing off a new album.

“Call it self-belief or delusions of grandeur when I started out, but it all worked,” he says.

While this is Chico’s second pantomime of any kind, he’ll be sharing the stage with The Grumbleweeds who have been starring in Christmas shows since 1970.

Robin Colvill and Graham Walker started in Leeds in 1962 and were soon heading a quintet who went on to TV and awardwinning radio fame.

Walker, 64, says: “This is our fifth panto at Darlington including one where we stepped in because Bobby Ball had had a nervous breadvan.” So far they’ve done Dick Whittington, Jack And The Beanstalk, Beauty And The Beast, Robin Hood and, now, Aladdin.

He feels that they are funnier as a double act. “It’s so simple. When two people walk out on stage it’s obvious one is the clown and the other is a suave bloke who knows what he’s talking about. And that’s how we get the laughs. Before, Robin was in the dressing room all the time listening to the laughs while he was getting changed into different costumes. Now he’s honed his performance down to quick changes so that when he does come on, some people swear there’s more than two of us,” Walker says.

Currently the act includes jokes like: What’s the sign outside the sweetshop in Westminster? Only two MPs allowed in this shop at one time.

“We’re hoping that MPs’ expenses last as a joke until Christmas,” he adds.

Colvill, 65, is looking forward to working with Chico.

He says: “When you work with actors from EastEnders or whatever, the main problem is that they need ‘the line’ as their cue and they freeze if they don’t hear it. One threw a wobbler and told me ‘you’ve changed your hat and didn’t tell me’ and it had confused him on stage. But Chico is up for all the ad-libbing we do so we’re going to have a laugh.”

The pair currently play a lot of cruise ships and the audience loves what it sees as the “mistakes and ad-libbing”. “What they don’t realise is that you can see that howling error every night because it’s part of the show,” says Colvill.

“Kids are always saying to us ‘how do you get into showbusiness?’ and older actors, like Roy Walker, come up to us and say ‘how do you get out of it?’” he jokes. “But if you said to me ‘you’re retiring and have time to watch TV’ I’d go out of my mind. We’ve got to be working. Doing a show is like taking a drug.”