BOO!

Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.

It’s with a heavy heart that I must call time on my career as a pantomime villain. Over the last few years, I’ve been privileged to play with some of the greats – an Ugly Sister alongside Phil from EastEnders in Scarborough, Captain Hook opposite Home And Away’s Marilyn in Pan at the Beck Theatre, Hayes – but it’s time for me to call it a day on my own terms.

What’s that, boys and girls? I’ve had to retire because the offers of work have dried up? Why I oughta… It’s true that there are other young South African villains coming through, okes who can stomp around and glare at people. And maybe they are more frightening. But have they got the timing for the killer line, the wit to take a bit of a light-hearted heckle and come back with off-the-cuff stuff like “I’m going to kill you, you bastard, and then I’m going to burn down your house and kill all your relations”? No, they don’t.

As for suggestions that I have retired because I have found my potential roles limited by the most welcome emergence of villains from different ethnic communities, all I can say is “Oh no I didn’t.”

In this business we call show, it’s all about audience rapport. For instance, when I was doing my Dirty Rat in Dick Whittington over in Australia, I had tremendous fun with everyone in the audience, not just the boys and girls but the ladies and jellyspoons as well. “Get off Nel, you’re absolutely rubbish,” the boys and girls would scream, and sometimes they would really enter into the spirit of panto by throwing bottles at my head. It’s all part of a rich tradition.

Although I won’t be in big-time panto anymore, going toe-to-toe with your Davros and your Pasquales, I’m very excited about my new role in rep in South London. If I can help turn some of these young lads into the Widow Twankies of tomorrow, then it’ll all be worthwhile.

Alan Tyers won’t be appearing in the Nutcracker alongside the Chuckle Brothers and Baddoo from Shipwrecked in Romford again this Xmas