HE'LL never escape his I Could Crush A Grape catchphrase, but Stu Francis has many other claims to fame... including the day he almost pushed a custard pie into the face of the Princess of Wales.

Francis, 51, is regarded as Britain's best comic turn in pantomime. He's also the prince of pratfalls to millions of TV viewers thanks to presenting BBC1's Crackerjack and ITV's Crush A Grape throughout most of the 1980s. Now he's back where he started as a stand-up comic, only with his name in lights at Blackpool's North Pier summer season, with a reputation as this country's hardest working funny man.

He's booked to play Wishee Washee in Aladdin at Newcastle's Theatre Royal and obligingly turns up to publicise his role despite it being a good six months until panto season.

He opens with a surprise and a joke (surprise, surprise).

Francis says: "I don't really keep a track of all the pantos I've done. Believe it or not the only panto I haven't been in is Aladdin. I've done all the others, Snow White and Cinderella, I've even done Robinson Crusoe. I last did panto at Newcastle Theatre Royal 11 years ago. It must have been successful because it's taken them ten years to invite me back!"

On his 22 years of panto stardom, he rubs a hand over his face and says: "That's a hell of a lot of years in panto. Christmas Day has become my only day off and I'm used to Christmas dinner on a frisbee."

Bolton-based Francis has just opened at the North Pier in Blackpool in a variety show that's a blast from the past with The Bachelors, Susan Maughan, Bernie Clifton and Alan Randall.

"It's not a summer season, it's a career because it runs until the end of the illuminations in October," he says.

But despite being booked until October, his panto co-star John Inman reveals that summer season is now three days a week instead of five, six or seven.

But Blackpool's not far from Bolton where Francis lives with wife Wendy. His son Andrew, 31, is in the hotel industry and daughter Zoe, 25, is a fitness instructor. "I thought I was fit until I tried to keep up with her," he jokes.

So where did Crush A Grape come from? "I was appearing in cabaret. There was a gang of women near the front really laughing and there was one elderly lady that I started talking to and in a millionth of a second, you realise you've gone down a blind alley. She said she was enjoying herself and I said 'I'm so excited I could...' and I'm leaning over this old lady and people are wondering 'oh my God, what is he going to say?' and then I said 'I could crush a grape' and the place just laughed again."

"Then later, in the bar, one guy said to another 'here he is, old crush a grape'. It was as silly as that and if he hadn't said that then I might never have said it again. That's where it was born and all the other expressions like 'I could jump off a doll's house' and 'I could test-drive a Tonka', came about because of crush a grape. In cabaret I get crush a grape out of the way by doing a song at the start - but I don't think Wishee Washee will be using that catchphrase."

Why is he rated as the number one panto comic?

"I don't go through the motions in pantomime. When I go out there I believe it. It's not hard to do for two-and-a-half hours is it, to believe something and give it your all? I think it rubs off on other people."

Francis actually started out with the ambition of being a circus clown. His first job, as a kid, was with Roberts Brothers circus as a stable boy looking after 12 Shetland ponies during the school holidays.

"Over the years, Charlie Cairoli has become a big pal and I actually did a massive show in the Tower Ballroom for a thousand kids. I did this slapstick sketch, red nose, cream pie, full bit with Charlie Cairoli. It was timed for when Princess Diana was walking in. I had this big pie in my hand as she walked on stage and the whole place erupted. I looked at her and I looked at this pie and looked at Caroli and she just said 'do not even think about it'.

"She smiled at me and I put the pie down. I said to Charlie 'if I had done it I would have been in the national newspapers or in some cell surrounded by a task force'. But it was a wonderful moment and the Tower Ballroom still has the photograph."

* Aladdin runs at Newcastle's Theatre Royal from December 9 until January 18, 2003. Box Office: 0870 905 5061